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Sir ivepeeaieare, 


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eeeenceie eee fearon eae ee eee 


bapetans ors. 
Pelatoeetd 


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Sans 
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i eae a 


eo tne ose 


pbyapsceanprene cone sp etree Sa Senet 
Santee = : aaees = : : eee Sere 


5 





Srom fhe LiBrarp of 


(Professor Withiam Wiffer (parton, D.D., BZ.D. 
Presented fp Wire. (parton 
fo the Zifrarp of 
(Princeton Theofogical Seminarp 
BX 9178 .W55 W5 1925 


Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921. 
With mercy and with judgment 


if at Haney 


Waaee ea fay ee 
4 A a 


iy ’ 


Y ae 
a i Ae aad . 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/withmercywithjud0Owhyt_0 


WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


By Alexander Whyte, D.D. 


WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 
LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


By G. F. Barbour, D.Phil. 
THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 


<GNwY OF NY OF RE 


WDA MERCY AND« F age 
WITH JUDGMEN EH.asieu, seu” 


BY | 


ALEXANDER “WHYTE, D.D. 


With mercy and with judgment 
My web of time He wove. 


NEW es YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PREFACE 


THE welcome given to the volume of Dr. Whyte’s 
Sermons on Prayer, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, has 
encouraged the hope that a more general volume 
might also be acceptable. That hope has been 
turned into a certainty by many specific requests, 
and the present volume is the result. 

Dr. Whyte has left so much behind him of weight, 
worth and beauty that it has been difficult to 
find a principle of selection. It was desired to make 
this volume representative of all periods of his 
ministry, but much of what he used in earlier years 
was recast by himself, both for pulpit use and for 
publication in the Bzble Characters and other books. 
The later sermons were also found to be on the 
whole more readable than the earlier. Again and 
again, in comparing the earlier and the later forms 
of one sermon, it was found that the later had 
gained in conciseness and force. The oldest sermon 
in this volume, that on “‘ The Image of God in 
Man,” dates from 1882. It is also the longest, and 
in its massive, logical style, it may be felt to bring 
with it the atmosphere of the earlier period when 


vi WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Dr. Whyte’s preaching was more closely reasoned 
and less imaginative than it afterwards became. 

It was obvious that this volume must include 
some of the Communion messages which abide 
among the most precious spiritual memories of the 
people of St. George’s. There is included among 
those given here the sermon on the Ransom, which, 
on the testimony of many witnesses, was an un- 
forgettable event in the spiritual life of those 
who heard it. Sir William Robertson Nicoll, 
who was present that morning, wrote at the time 
of the “rare wealth of imagination and emotion ”’ 
which was poured into that discourse. Scarcely 
less moving is the prolonged soliloquy of the sermon, 
“T am crucified with Christ,’ or the imaginative 
power of that on “‘ The New Wine of the Kingdom.” 
A special historical interest also attaches itself 
to the two final messages of his long ministry— 
that on “‘ The Swelling of Jordan,’’ which was the 
last he was able to preach, and that on ‘“‘ The 
Hebrew Child’s Question,’’ which was prepared 
for a Communion service, but which he was unable 
to deliver. 

The first section of this volume, containing 
sermons of a more general type, has fallen of its 
own accord into two parts, though no absolute 
division is possible. One of the wonders of Dr. 
Whyte’s ministry was its enlarging and deepening 
power. Sometimes the deepening was intellectual. 


PREFACE Vii 


Sometimes again it was the imagination or the 
conscience that was stimulated; or his hearers 
suddenly felt their devotional life to be far smaller 
and poorer than it might have been. The first 
few sermons will be found to be more or less of this 
type. The second group has scarcely less of this 
quality, though on the whole it comes closer still 
to the evangelistic side of Dr. Whyte’s message. 
In general theme this group and the Communion 
section might have been blended together. 

The title for the whole volume has been chosen 
from the hymn which was most closely associated 
with Dr. Whyte’s ministry and which he chose 
perhaps oftener than any other for the close of a 
service. No sermon he ever preached was far from 
the twofold theme of mercy and judgment; and 
the sea of glass mingled with fire is no unfitting 
symbol of the eternal realities as he saw them and 
proclaimed them. 

J. M. E. ROSS. 





. 


- 
f 


CONTENTS 


PART’ I 
O THE DEPTH OF THE RICHES 
I. THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD . : ‘ 
** Whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? ’—Ps. 
Cxxeineys 


“Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord.” — 
JER. xxiii. 24. 
* Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world. Amen.’”—Matt. xxviii. 20. 
[St. George’s, February 22, 1903.] 


II. THE IMAGE oF Gop . ; : . 
*‘ All that is within me, bless His holy Name.”— 
Ps. ciii. 1. 


** God said, Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness. . . . So God created man in His own 
image.” —GEN. i. 26, 27. 

[St. George’s, February 26, 1882.] 


Ill. THE STRAPPADO : ¢ ‘ S 
** All my bones are out of joint.” —Ps. xxii. 14. 
[Undated.] 
IV. Loox to vour MOTIVES ; : . 


** If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body 
shall be full of darkness.”’—Mart. vi. 22, 23. 

{St. George’s, May 6, 1894.] 


Ix 


PAGE 


17 


a5 


44 


x WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


PAGE 
V. THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION on 


** Work out your own salvation.” —PHIL. ii. 12. 


[St. George’s, November 10, 1895.] 


VI. THE ELEMENT OF TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS . 69 


*‘ What, could ye not watch with Me one hour ? ”"— 
MATT. xXvi. 40. 


{[St. George’s, about 1896. Rewritten and preached 
at the Barclay Church and elsewhere, 1902.] 


VII. A WonpDER IN HEAVEN ‘ : aca, 
‘‘ There appeared a great wonder in heaven. .. .”— 
REV. xii. I-5. 
{[St. George’s, January 13, 1901.] 


PART II 
MERCY AND TRUTH ARE MET TOGETHER 


VIII. THE Locust-EATEN Past: A NEw YEAR 
MESSAGE : 4 : Lois 


“That which the palmerworm hath left hath the 
locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left 
hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which 
the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar 
eaten.”’—J OELi. 4. 

‘JT will restore to you the years that the locust hath 
eaten.”’—-J OEL ii. 25. 

[St. George’s, January 5, 1896.] 


Y IX. WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST ? ; out 108 
* What think ye of Christ ? ”—Marr. xxii. 42. 
[St. George’s, July 14, 1907.] 


CONTENTS xi 


> X. THe Corn or WHEAT 5 ' - 120 


*. .. Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, 
that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it 
die, it bringeth forth much fruit... .”—JouN 
xi. 20-33- 

[St. George’s, November 18, 1887. Preached also in 

St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, at an Exhibition 
Service, June 3, 1883.] 


XI. THe Master AND HIS FRIENDS = $5: / 535 


“ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if 
ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I 
call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth not 
what his lord doeth: but I have called you 
friends ; for all things that I have heard of My 
Father I have made known unto you.”—JOHN xv. 
I3-T5- 


[St. George’s, April 8, 1894.] 


XII. Tee HonovurRaBlreE NAME 


: - - 148 
“And the disciples were called Christians first in 
Antioch.”—Acts zi. 26. 


[St. George’s, March 13, 1894.j 


> XIIL A Great Gosper TEXT : : - 160 


“To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him 
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for 
righteousness.” —Rom. iv. 5. 


[St. George’s, May 11, 1902; and again, 
October 12, 1902.] 


xii WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


XIV. THE Four WINDS . : : : 
“* After these things I saw four angels standing on the 
four corners of the earth, holding the four winds 
of the earth, that the wind should not blow on 
the earth, nor on thesea,noronanytree. AndI 
saw another angel ascending from the east, 
having the seal of the living God: and he cried 
with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it 
was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, 
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the 
trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God 

in their foreheads.”"—REvV. vii. I-3. 


{St. George’s, February 26, 1893.] 


PART Ill 
IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME 
XV. THE ComFrorts oF Gop A : - 
“Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.” 
—IsA, xl. 1. 


[St. George’s, January 26, 1896.] 


XVI. THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET. : : 
“ Who hath believed our report ? ’°—TIsa. liii. rz. 
[St. George’s, October 29, 1905.] 


XVII. THE RANSOM. : ¥ : . 


“ To give His life a ransom for many.”—Martt. xx. 28. 
[St. George’s, January 25, 1895-] 


XVIII. CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST * : . 
**T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; 
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life 
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of 
the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Him- 
self for me.” —GAL. ii. 20. 


[St. George's, October 28, 1888.] 


PAGE 


171 


187 


201 


214 


227 


CONTENTS xiii 


PAGE 
> XIX. To THE UTTERMOST . ; ° Aaa Ne, 
** Able to save to the uttermost.” —HEnB. vii. 25. 

{St. George’s, June 28, 1903.] 
XX. THE NEw WINE OF THE KINGDOM. WvEasO 


**T say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this 
fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it 
new with you in My Father’s Kingdom.’— 
MATT. xxvi. 29. 


[St. George’s, June 25, 1905.] 


PAGES LV: 
LAST MESSAGES 


XXI. A StuDY IN THE SWELLING OF JORDAN . 263 
** How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? ”— 
JER. Xii. 5. 


[The last sermon preached, St. George’s, 
March 11, 1917.] 


XXII. THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION AT THE 
PASSOVER SUPPER : : Hie WV A 
** Tt shall come to pass, when your children shall say 
unto you, What mean ye by this service ? that 
ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s 
passover.”—Ex. xii. 26, 27. 
{Written for the Communion Service of March 25, 1917, 
but never preached.] 





| Sila d No Bee | 


O THE DEPTH OF THE RICHES 


hj 


OVA Ha pn 
ee 





‘> 
THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 


*“‘ Whither shall I fiee from Thy presence ? ’’—Ps. cxxxix. 7. 

“Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.’’—JEr. 
xxiii. 24. 

‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. 
Amen.’’—MatTT. xxviii. 20. 


My discourse this morning will be De Natura 
Deorum: that is to say, concerning the Divine 
Nature. 

But to begin with, let us look for one moment at 
the actual word “‘nature’’ simply by itself. ‘‘ All 
flesh is not the same flesh,’’ says the Apostle in 
one of his high arguments. “‘ But there is one 
kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another 
of fishes, and another of birds,’”’ Now by his word 
“flesh ’’’ in that passage, the Apostle means the 
same thing, exactly, that we mean when we employ 
our well-known word “nature.” It is exactly as 
if he had said—“‘ All nature is not the same nature. 
But there is one nature of men, another nature of 
beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”’ 
In our classification of created things we speak first 

3 


4 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of the “‘ nature’ of earths and minerals. Ascending 
to the kingdom of created things immediately above 
the earths and the minerals, we come to the “‘ nature’”’ 
of grasses and plants and trees, and all things of 
that kind. And then we rise to the “nature”’ of 
animals. Above the nature of mere animals, again, 
we rise to our own “‘ human nature,” in its “ four- 
fold state ’’’ of man unfallen ; man fallen, and sinful, 
and mortal; man redeemed, and renewed, and re- 
stored; and man perfectly sanctified, and for 
ever glorified. While, rising a little higher than 
man, we come next to the ‘nature’? of the 
angels. 

And then, at an absolutely infinite exaltation, we 
ascend to the “ Divine Nature.”’ 

Now, if you were to go back upon all that, and 
were to ask of me just what is an earth or a mineral, 
I would answer your inquiry by telling you some of 
the attributes and characteristic qualities that, all 
taken together, make an earth what it is. And 
~ in the same way I would describe to you a plant, 
and in like manner an animal. And in like manner, 
aman. I would say to you that “ God created man 
after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, 
and holiness.’’ And then, if you asked me to go 
on to define to you the “nature” of angels—I 
would say to you that I could not doit. I could 
only tell you that “‘ they are all ministering spirits, 
sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 5 


of salvation.”’ And if you still went on to interro- 
gate me as to the “ Divine Nature,” if you put this 
question to me—*‘ What is God?” I would be 
content to answer you in the words which I 
have myself been taught—‘‘God is a Spirit, 
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, 
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and 
truth.”’ 

Now the omnipresence of God is that glorious 
attribute of the Divine Nature on which we are to 
meditate this morning. And it will demand all our 
powers of meditation. God’s omnipresence—that 
is to say, God’s presence everywhere and wholly 
everywhere. God’s presence with all His creatures 
of all kinds, and in all places of His dominion. 
Give strength, then, to your understanding, and 
give wings to your imagination, and give holy fear 
to your heart, while we try to enter upon those 
great matters—‘ which eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man. 
But God hath revealed them unto us by His 
Spirit.’”’ 

When you try to do it, you cannot limit the 
presence of God to any one place on earth, or in 
heaven: no, nor to all places on earth and in 
heaven, taken together. Place, precinct, locality, 
situation—when you attempt it, you soon find how 
absolutely impossible it is to limit and restrict 
Almighty God in that way. Even to speak of His 


6 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


“house ”’ in which we now are,—and though Holy 
Scripture teaches us and encourages us so to speak,— 
that is, all the time, to speak as a child, and to 
understand as a child, and to think as a child. 
Heaven and earth, time and eternity, all worship 
their Maker in these adoring words, and say : “ Be- 
hold the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot 
contain Thee: how much less this house which we 
have builded.” 

Our more thoughtful men of science, in some of 
their profoundest speculations, try to penetrate 
to the true “ constitution,’ as they call it, of the 
physical universe. But to us, God is-the true and 
only constituent both of the physical and the 
Spiritual universe. God is the ultimate analysis, 
and the innermost essence, and the deepest root, 
and the all-producing and the all-sustaining cause 
of all existence. The whole universality and im- 
mensity of all things, created and uncreated, is all 
one and the same mystery of Godliness. All created 
things—the most firm and stable—would instantly 
stagger and reel back, and dissolve into their 
original nothingness and annihilation, if Almighty 
God withheld His all-upholding hand from them 
for one moment. The pillars of the earth are His, 
and it is He Who has established the world on its 
strong foundations. From a grain of sand on the 
seashore, up to all the endless systems of suns and 
stars in the heavens: from those creatures of God 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 7 


that are too small for the eye of man to see them, 
up to the choms of Cherubim and Seraphim before 
the throne,—to our ears they all unite and rejoice 
to sme-—“* In Hom we Iive, and move, and have our 
beme” “ For, of Him, and through Him, and to 
Hm, are all thimes.” 

And then, if anythme, could add to the awe and 
the wonder of all that, tt would be this other all- 
tramscendime truth—that He Who its everywhere 
is also wholly everywhere. Now that Almighty 
God is wholly, and is contimmally, with every one 
of us m all the completeness, and m all the totality, 
of His Godhead—what an absolutely bewildering 
thought is that! Absolutely bewildering,—were it 
not that it is revealed to us, and is borne m upon 
us not to bewilder us, but to enlighten us, and to 
support us, amd to solace us, and to sanctify us, 
till it shall slorify us. Were we but able to receive 
it—-we have our God, and the whole of our God, as 
much with us as if we had been Adam, new from 
the hand of God, and walking alone with the whole 
presemce of God, among the frees of the garden. 
There is 2 certam far-off image and adumbration 
of all that evem among ourselves. A father’s 
presence with his children ts not Imited to one of 
thematatime. His fatherly presence is not broken 
up into so many portions, and so distributed from 
time to time, among his soms. And much less is a 
mother’s love portioned and poured out according 


8 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


to the number of her sons and her daughters. 
Every one of her children has all their mother’s 
presence with them, all her heart, all her thoughts, 
all her solicitude, all her prayers. Till, wheresoever 
she has a child, that child of hers can adopt the 
words of the great Psalm, and can say to his mother : 
‘“‘ Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I 
ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make 
my bed in hell, behold, thou art there... . If 
I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea: even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” 
Only,—she might forget her sucking child, that she 
should not have compassion on the son of her womb : 
yet will I not forget thee. 

But to come from God the Father, to God the 
Son. What is this that God, the Son, here says 
to His disciples, and through them to us? “Lo,” 
He says, ““I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world. Amen.’ And that, be it well 
remarked, just after He had said this also: “I 
ascend to My Father.’’ And this: “I goto prepare 
a place for you.’ And this: ‘“‘It is expedient 
for you that I go away.”’ And this: “‘ If ye loved 
Me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto the 
Father.’ And then, with all that, He actually 
says this  self-contradictory-looking word—“ Lo, 
I am with you alway, to the end of the world. 
Amen.’ My brethren, you must never, for one 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 9 


moment, forget this. You must put out of mind 
and memory everything else, in order at all times 
to remember this. This, namely—Who and What 
He is, who says to His disciples, and to us, these 
seemingly so contradictory things. Mark with all 
your might that it is not God the Father Who says 
these so startling things,—these, at first sight, so 
impossible-looking things, about going away till 
the end of the world: and, then, in the next breath, 
about remaining and abiding present all the time 
with men on the earth. It is not God the Father 
Who says these strange things. Neither is it God 
the Holy Ghost. It is God the Son, Who alone 
so speaks. It is the Word made, and remaining, 
flesh. It is the God-Man. It is Immanuel, God 
with us. You have the whole key to this mystery 
of all mysteries, you have the complete reconcilia- 
tion of all these contradictions and difficulties, in 
your own tongue in which you were born. Even 
in this. ‘‘ The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the 
Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of 
God, became man, and so was, and continueth 
to be, God and man, in two distinct natures and 
one person for ever.”’ My brethren, if you would 
be wise yourselves to salvation, and would make 
your children wise with you to their salvation— 
first learn with your whole mind and with your whole 
heart yourselves, and then teach to your children, 
“the truth as it is in Jesus.”’ Talk about Him to 


10 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


your children, when you sit in your house, and when 
you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and 
when you rise up. And thus taught of God the 
true mystery of God and of Christ, you will be able 
to reconcile into a glorious harmony of grace and 
truth all these so staggering speeches of your Lord 
and Saviour concerning Himself, and concerning 
your salvation. And this is “the truth as it is 
in Jesus.”’ This, that ever since His Incarnation, 
ever since His birth of Mary, our Lord has possessed 
the nature of man, in addition to, and in everlasting 
incorporation with, the Divine Nature. And thus 
it is that He sometimes speaks, and acts, in His 
Divine Nature: and sometimes, again, in His 
Human Nature. Sometimes as pure Son of God, 
and sometimes as pure Son of Man. As in these 
texts of this morning. As God the Son, He is 
with His disciples, and with us everywhere, and 
wholly everywhere, and to the end of the world. 
Whereas, as He is man, He is no longer with His 
disciples, but is with His Father, and with the holy 
angels, and with the glorified souls of His saints 
in heaven. He no longer prays in Gethsemane 
and on His face and in a sweat of blood. He now 
stands a Prince and a Saviour, making all-prevailing 
intercession for His people at His Father’s right 
hand. And it will only be when His office of inter- 
cession is for ever finished that the Word made flesh 
will appear on earth again, the second time, without 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 11 


sin and unto salvation. You have it all wrapped 
up in these three unsearchable words—* two dis- 
tinct natures.”’ The one nature with all the infinite 
attributes of the Godhead belonging to it; and the 
other nature with all the finite, and limited, and 
located attributes of His true Manhood belonging 
toit. And thus it is that such otherwise impossible 
blessings come to us out of His real, and abiding, 
and everlasting incarnation. For by means of His 
incarnation we have all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily in Christ ; and we have all that in a new and 
unspeakably blessed way. That is to say, we have 
the whole Divine Nature with all its Godhead attri- 
butes in Christ; and in Christ we have them all 
with that peculiar pity, and grace, and fellow-feel- 
ing added that come so home to Him and to us, 
through His possession and experience of our 
human nature. 


“Though now ascended up on high, 
He bends on earth a brother’s eye: 
Partaker of the human name, 

He knows the frailty of our frame. 
Our fellow-suff’rer yet retains 

A fellow-feeling of our pains: 

And still remembers in the skies 
His tears, and agonies, and cries.” 


And then, from all that it follows—that while His 
heavenly glory now and for ever endows His human 


nature to all its fulness; and perfects His human 
nature to every possible perfection; and crowns 


12 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


His human nature with every possible honour 
and reward; at the same time, all His heavenly 
glory does not remove, or in any way obliterate, 
or break down, so much as one of the true borders 
and boundaries of His human nature. His Divinity 
does not in heaven, any more than on earth, ex- 
tinguish, or in any way impair, His real and true 
and ever-abiding humanity. He is now and He 
will for ever remain God and man in “ two distinct 
natures and one person for ever.”’ 

To all eternity, and amid all his surpassing glory, 
we shall never need to say with Mary Magdalene: 
“ They have taken away my Lord out of my know- 
ledge, out of my sight, and out of my presence, and 
I know not in what light inaccessible they have 
again hid Him!” For, to all eternity, He will 
remain among us and one of us, the Man Christ 
Jesus, the Lamb as He had been slain. Only, for 
ever crowned with the whole glory of God, as He 
is alone worthy to be so crowned. Worthy is the 
Lamb that was slain ! 

1. A thousand thoughts crowd in upon our minds 
as we meditate on these majestic matters. One 
who meditated on these majestic matters from his 
fifteenth year, and that with a singularly original 
and adoring mind, has put his experience into these 
well-known words: “‘ My conversion made me rest 
in the thought of two and two only, absolute and 
luminously self-evident beings, myself and my 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 13 


Creator.” And again, in a great sermon: “To 
understand that we have souls is to feel our separa- 
tion from things visible, our independence of them, 
our distinct existence in ourselves, our individuality, 
our power of acting for ourselves, this way or that 
way, and our accountableness to Another for what 
we do. Till, in this way, we begin by degrees to 
perceive that there are but two beings in the whole 
universe, our own soul and the God Who made it.” 
Sublime, unlooked-for doctrine! Yet most true to 
every one of us! 

z. But then, God is present and is wholly present 
only to him who believes that. Our belief does not 
indeed cause God to be; and our unbelief does not 
cause Him not to be. Only, this is His nature and 
our nature, that He is to each one of us just accord- 
ing as we believe Him to be. If we choose, we can 
say with the fool—* There is no God.” Or, if we 
choose, we can say with the saint—There is 
nothing else in the whole world but God and my 
own soul. Believe in God and in His presence with 
you, and His presence is immediately and wholly 
with you as it was with David in the Psalms, and 
with Jesus Christ in the Gospels, and with Paul in 
the Epistles. Have faith in God, and in your 
own souls. 

3. And then again, there is this. ‘“ There are 
three Persons in the Godhead,—the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one 


14 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


God, the same in substance, equal in power and 
glory.” That is to say, the Three Divine Persons 
are wholly everywhere, they are all three wholly 
with you and with me. Think ofthat! And think 
continually of that, especially in your prayers and 
praise. Sometimes turn to God the Father, and 
say to Him—Father, I have sinned. Sometimes 
say to Him—Our Father which art in heaven. 
Sometimes, again, say—Father, glorify Thy name. 
And sometimes say—Father of mercies, and God 
of all comforts. And, sometimes, just look up and 
say—Abba! Father ! 

Then again, while not turning away one moment 
from the Father, turn toward the Son and say: 
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself 
in Thee.”’ And, again: 

*‘ Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that Thy blood was shed for me, 


And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, 
O Lamb of God, I come.” 


And then, at another time, and indeed continu- 
ally, look up and salute the descending Comforter, 
and say: 

“Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, 
My sinful maladies remove : 


Be Thou my guard, be Thou my guide, 
O’er every thought and step preside.” 


For they are “‘the same in substance, equal in 
power and glory.”’ 


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD 15 


4. My brethren, you speak in praise of a liberal 
education, and you consult as to where it is best to 
be found. You send one of your sons to study the 
Greek and Latin classics for the ennobling of his 
character, for the refining and the enriching of his 
mind, and for the peopling of his imagination with 
the great men and the great achievements of the 
greatest ages of this world’s history. You send 
another to a different study for the strengthening 
and the disciplining of his reasoning powers. And 
another to a master under whose tuition he will 
form lifelong habits of observation, induction, 
and classification. All well and good. And may 
all your anxiety and all your outlay be amply re- 
warded. Only, all the time, here is the most 
liberalising, and ennobling, and refining, and every 
way rewarding of all possible studies; and it is 
as open to the poor as to the rich, and to the old 
as to the young. Here is thought, infinitely the 
most magnificent ; and observation the most inex- 
haustible ; and experience, gathered out of God, 
and out of a man’s own soul; out of all time, and 
yet to be gathered out of a coming eternity. Here 
is meditation, both the sweetest and the most 
strengthening. Here is the life of prayer on earth, 
and the life of praise in heaven. Here is the chief 
end of our creation and our redemption,—God. 
“That they all may be one: as Thou, Father, art 
in Me, and I in Thee. I in them, and Thou in Me: 


16 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and that the love wherewith Thou hast loved 
Me may be in them, and Tin them.” Yes! What 
an education! What a sanctification! What a 
glorification is the practice of the Omnipresence 
of God ! 


TI 
THE IMAGE OF GOD 


** All that is within me, bless His holy Name,’’—Ps. ciii. 1. 
“God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, 
. . So God created man in His own image.’’—GEn, i. 26, 27. 


AN image is any imitation, resemblance, or simili- 
tude of another thing. Animageis anything drawn, 
painted, sculptured, or executed in any other way 
so as to resemble, repeat, and reproduce some 
person or thing. We have the original and exact 
sense of the word sufficiently set forth in the Second 
Commandment of the Decalogue: ‘‘ Thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image, or any like- 
ness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that 
is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under 
the earth.”’ This is the original and fundamental 
sense of the well-known word “‘image,’’—but, at the 
same time, such is the capacity and scope of the 
word that it can be and has been applied in a great 
variety of senses, and put to a great variety of uses, 
artistic and ethical, material and spiritual, some of 
the highest and noblest of which I am now to attempt 


to elucidate. 
2 


18 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


1. By far the highest use and application of this 
word is made when the New Testament Scriptures 
apply it to the eternal generation and essential 
sonship of the Second Divine Person. Though not 
set in as many words, the son-like image and simili- 
tude of the Son to the Father is sufficiently set 
forth in the dialogue between Jesus and the two 
disciples. Jesus said unto Thomas—“ If ye had 
known Me, ye should have known My Father also, 
and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen 
Him.”’ And afterwards to Philip—*‘ Have I been 
so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known 
Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
Father: and how sayest thou then, Shew us the 
Father ? ”’ 

And in as many words we have the Apostolic 
doctrine of the Divine Image in an Epistle :— 
““God made all things by His Son, Who is the 
brightness of His glory, and the express Image of 
His person.’’ And in another Epistle, the Son is 
described as the “‘image of the invisible God, 
the First-born of every creature.’’ And in yet 
another Epistle we read of the glorious Gospel of 
Christ, who is “‘ the Image of God.”” These passages 
are intended to carry us, if we have the mind to 
follow them, beyond and above and before Creation. 
Here we see none, not the earliest and most exalted 
of His creatures: here we are alone with God, ° 
Eternal, and Immortal, and Invisible, Who is 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 19 


before all things, and by Whom all things consist. 
And of that Divine, Eternal, and Invisible Life it is 
revealed and declared that the Son is the Essential 
Image of the Father: the Only-Begotten Son is 
the Image, though, as yet, the equally Invisible 
Image of the always Invisible Father. The Son is 
the Father’s Image in Nature or Essence: in power, 
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, and in all 
other Divine Perfections. The Son indeed is such 
an Image of the Father that he that seeth Him hath 
seen the Father: he that hath seen the Son hath 
no more occasion to say, ‘‘ Shew me the Father.”’ 
Indeed, with the most entire truth it may be said 
that the Only-Begotten Son of God is the Father in 
all Divine Attributes and Perfections, in all things 
but Personality and Paternity,—Primal Personality 
and Fontal Paternity. Athanasius, to whom the 
Church of Christ owes so much, says: “ The Son, 
being an offspring from the Divine Substance, is 
one in Substance, Himself and the Father that 
begat Him. This is why what is said of the Father 
is said in Scripture of the Son also, all but His being 
called Father. ...’’ And Athanasius’s latest and 
best editor adds: “‘ Though the Son is in all things 
the Father’s Image, this implies some exception: 
for else He would not be like or equal, but the same. 
. . . Hence He is the Father’s Image in all things 
except in being the Father. . .. For the Son is 
the Image of the Father, not as Father, but as God.” 


20 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


This, then, in few words, is the scriptural and 
ecclesiastical doctrine of the Divine Image in the 
Eternal Son. 

2. From this the highest, the almost too high use 
of the word ‘‘ Image’”’—from the heavenly use of an 
earthly word, I pass on to the secondary use, the 
use made of the word in the text, ‘‘ God created 
man in His own image, in the image of God created 
He him.”’ The first head dealt with the Image of 
God in the Eternal Son: and the second head deals 
with the Image of God in man: in Milton’s words, 
‘in man, God’s latest image.”’ 

According to the scriptural account of the Creation 
of man there was in it a twofold act or process. 
“The Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life, and man became a living soul.” The image 
of God in man is, so far, a complete and compre- 
hensive likeness, but it is a likeness composed out 
of many features and laid down in many linea- 
ments. There are many lines requisite to compose 
and complete the Divine similitude. Now, in 
searching in man for the Divine Image, we at once 
pass beyond all in him that was ‘made of the 
dust of the ground.” For no formation of dust, 
not even when it is refined and elaborated into flesh 
and blood,—no such material substance can carry 
on it an impression of the image of God. It is not 
therefore in man’s body, erect, noble, fair, beaming 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 21 


with intelligence and girded with strength as it is: 
it is not in man’s body that the Divine image stands, 
but in his soul, in his mind, in his conscience, and 
in his heart; or as we have from our youth been 
taught, the image of God in man “ consists in know- 
ledge, righteousness, and true holiness.” 

Let knowledge then be taken as the first of those 
features, those spiritual features, in which we descry 
the presence of the image of God in man. Now, 
by the knowledge that man was created with, it 
is not meant that man had from the first the faculty 
of acquiring knowledge, or the power of attaining 
and treasuring up the results of experience and 
contemplation. Man by nature had and has the 
power of observation, comparison, contemplation, 
consideration, and memory. But over and above 
that, he at first had possession of the best sources 
of knowledge in a more excellent way. Omniscience 
is one of the most clearly revealed attributes of 
the. Divine Nature. God has knowledge of all 
things, as by direct and immediate vision of them. 
Now though man in nothing shares this Divine 
attribute, yet he had and still in measure has 
a gift, a creative gift, that in its way and measure 
may be said to partake of that Divine prerogative. 
For in man as he came from the hand of God there 
was a rich and flowing fountain of innate know- 
ledge. There was, as it were, a well of intuitional 
truth springing up continually in his mind and 


22 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


heart and conscience. Our father Adam left us 
this well as part of our impoverished inheritance : 
he drank of it himself, he and all his children: and 
in spite of all that has been done to choke and 
pollute it, it still springs up like living water in the 
deep and hidden places of the human heart. And 
this knowledge was not a theoretical and speculative 
knowledge, but a profoundly practical and imme- 
diately fruitful knowledge. It had its fountain and 
wellspring even more in the heart than in the 
understanding, in the conscience more than in the 
intellect. The heart of man, when God created 
it, entered into it, and said: “* This is my rest, here 
will I dwell’: the human heart then was pure, 
and true, and good, and fulloflove. ‘‘ God is Love,” 
and the image of God was best impressed on that 
which is the seat of love. Man’s morning intellect 
was strong and clear above any intellect that has 
been possessed by any man since men’s minds were 
darkened by sin. “ Aristotle himself was but the 
rubbish of Adam.’”’ Man’s intellect in Eden was 
clear and strong, and it was sweetened and made 
fruitful in all its parts and in all its operations by 
the purity and peace and gladness of his heart. 
The candle of the Lord shone on Adam’s head. 
His body was the instrument and tabernacle of his 
soul: and his soul was the breath, and, as it were, 
the very Spirit of God Himself,—so great was God’s 
goodness to our race, and so excellent was His work 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 23 


of which it is said: ‘‘So God created man in His 
own image: in the image of God created He him.”’ 
It is a debate among scriptural students of human 
nature how much man lost of the Divine Image at 
the time of his Fall,—how much he lost, and how 
much he still retains. To assist themselves first 
in discovering the truth about this matter, and then 
to assist them in discoursing on it to us, theologians 
have taken a distinction between what is losable 
in the Divine Image, and what cannot be lost. 
There is first, say they, the natural Image of God, 
which, when once imprinted on the human soul, 
can never afterwards be obliterated or lost. Indeed, 
the natural image of God is not so much printed on 
the soul as incorporated withit. The very substance 
and structure of the soul is in the image of God. 
In the very spirituality of its substance the soul of 
man was and is and will for ever remain an image 
of God. The intellect, the power of reasoning and 
understanding: the will, the power of choosing, 
of accepting or rejecting: the conscience, the voice 
of a Judge in our bosom—all these are natural, 
original, fundamental, and inseparable powers and 
possessions of every human soul; and in these 
the substantial, and, so to speak, structural image 
of God in the soul consists. The creature that has 
once come into possession of these features of the 
Divine Image can never again lose them. Wherever 
man is found—in Eden or in Sodom; in grace or 


24 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


in glory ; in Earth or Heaven or Hell—beneath all 
his good or evil, blessedness or misery, there will 
always be found a human mind, will, conscience : 
indeed, sin and salvation, Heaven and Hell, could 
have no meaning, or even existence, for a creature 
that had not so much abidingly within him of the 
original Image of God. 

Nowhere is the language mm this truth so ably 
and eloquently set forth as in John Howe’s Living 
Temple. *' The ‘stately ruins,’’ he says, ‘’ of this 
living temple still bear this doleful inscription 
over their portal—Here God once dwelt. Enough 
still appears of the admirable form and structure of 
the soul of man to show that the Divine Presence 
did sometimes reside in it: more than enough 
of vicious deformity to proclaim that He is now 
retired and gone. The altar is overturned and 
the candlestick is broken: and in place of the 
sacred incense, with its clouds of rich perfumes, 
there is a poisonous and hellish vapour continually 
rising up. ... Look upon the fragments of that 
curious scripture that once adorned the Palace of 
the Great King: the lively prints of some undefaced 
truth, the fair ideas of things, the yet legible pre- 
cepts that relate to practice. . . . You come in all 
this confusion, on into the ruined palace of some 
great prince, and he that invites you to take a view 
of the soul of man says—Behold the desolation ! 
Behold the ruins of the Fall! The faded glory, the 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 25 


darkness, the disorder, the impurity, the decayed 
state in all respects of this temple too plainly show 
that the Great Inhabitant is gone.” 

3. The next step in our progress is to study the 
Image of God in the Second Adam, the Man Christ 
Jesus. We have already seen that He Who in the 
fulness of time became the Second Adam had from 
all eternity been the Divine Son, and as such the 
Image of the Eternal Father. And moreover, such 
an Image, as that further revelations and mani- 
festations of the Father were become possible 
through Him. In some way, quite unfathomable 
to us, the Divine Nature had come nearer us, and 
nearer all creation, in the Eternal Generation of the 
Divine Son. Creation and Providence, revelation 
and grace, had all become possible and indeed 
prophetic in the Eternal Sonship. To borrow a 
modern philosophical notion and nomenclature— 
the Unconditioned has become conditioned in the 
Second Person of the Godhead. ‘‘ The Father in 
His monarchy and invisibility secures the majesty 
and invisibility of the Godhead in its secret place: 
while the Son, Who issues thence, manifests its 
goodness, and shows forth its beneficence: and 
hence the Father is the Son’s incomprehensibility 
and invisibility while the Son is the Father’s com- 
prehensibility and visibility. ... The Father is 
the invisible Safeguard of Divinity, in that He 
is its Origin and Fount ; and the Son is the principle 


u 


26 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of its effusion, nay, the expenditure and emptying 
out of itself, saving always that the Father’s in- 
violability is the Son’s also, and the Son’s accessi- 
bility and munificence is the Father’s too. And 
hence it is that the Scriptures speak of the Father 
as invisible, and of the Son as the Image of the in- 
visible Father ; and hence the Scriptures sometimes 
say that God can be seen, and sometimes again that 
He cannot be seen. The truth is, Invisibility is 
reserved to the Father, while visibility is under- 
taken by the Son.” 

“Before Abraham was I Am,” said our Lord, 
asserting His Divinity and Eternity. And so may 
we say in asserting the Antiquity of the Divine 
Image in Him:—Before Adam was “ made” in 
the Image of God, the Eternal Son was “ begotten ”’ 
in that Image. And hence as to One already with 
God, and one who is His Fellow, and Counsellor, 
and Instrument, the Father said: ‘‘ Let us make 
man in Our Image, and after Our likeness.”’ And 
accordingly Adam was made after an older Image 
of God than himself was, even as the Apostle says: 
“after the Image of Him that created him.’”’ Thus 
it was that some of the Fathers called Adam a 
secondary and subordinate Image: “an image of 
the Image.’ And thus it is that in Paradise Lost 
we find ‘‘ man ”’ described as “ God’s latest image.” 
And thus it became both possible and congruous 
that that Divine Person who made man in His own 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 27 


Image should restore that Image when it was 
lost. And hence the fitness as well as the grace of 
the Incarnation: hence his eternal preparation 
and predisposition, so to speak, for his economical 
offices of Prophet and Priest and King over and 
among the sons of men. 

My brethren, it is no irreverent play upon words, 
but it is a most profound and fundamental truth 
to say—That as Adam in his creation was made in 
the Image of the Son of God, so the Son of God in 
His Incarnation was in return made in the Image 
of Adam. In His Incarnation the Son took on 
Himself a created Image of Himself when He took 
on our human nature. A Body and a Soul were 
prepared for Him: not, strictly speaking, as a new 
Creation, but as a sanctified extraction and holy 
reproduction of the body and soul of Mary, which 
in this respect were just the body and soul of Adam. 
The Body and the Mind, the Will, the Heart, the 
Conscience of the Man Christ Jesus were all made 
in the image of Adam. The new creation that 
was begun in Christ, so far as it was a new creation, 
consisted essentially in this :—in filling the Adamic 
mind that was found in Christ with Divine Light 
and Divine Truth; and in filling the Adamic will 
with filial humility and obedience; and in filling 
the Adamic heart with love to God and man, and 
the Adamic conscience with all the communion and 
peace of a Holy and Living Temple. The Image 


28 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of God in Jesus Christ stood not in any new con- 
stitution or reconstruction of the human mind of 
fallen man: it stood rather in the Spirit of God 
preparing a human will and mind and heart with 
such a preparation as that the Son of God could 
dwell in them, and work through them, and make 
them an Earthly Temple for a season, and the 
Heavenly Temple for evermore. The Image of’ 
God as seen in Christ the second Adam is simply 
a human understanding enlarged and enlightened 
without measure; a human will emancipated and 
carried captive under a sweet and blessed con- 
straint to the will of God; a human heart which 
is a Fountain of Love to God, and grace to men; 
and a human conscience which lies in His bosom 
like a sea of glass before the throne of God. 

4. I trust, my brethren, that in these deep and 
unfamiliar things we have not lost sight of our way 
or of one another. To make sure of that let me 
repeat what we have learned. The first head dealt 
shortly, and altogether inadequately, with the 
Image of God in His Only-Begotten Son. The 
second head exhibited the Image of God in Adam. 
And the third has just distinguished and displayed 
that same Image as it is seen in Jesus Christ. And 
now, in the fourth and last place, I shall shortly 
speak of the Image of God and Christ in regenerate 
men. 

Regeneration means that return upon our first 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 29 


original, that happy return by Redemption and 
Renewal, by means of which, while remaining the 
same men we always were, we are yet carried back 
to the beginning, and are, as it were, “‘ born again.”’ 
“Born again,’ that is, so as again to be made 
partakers; born partakers of those gifts and graces 
and privileges which had been received and lost 
before we were born. The New Testament speaks 
repeatedly and emphatically of our being “‘re- 
newed after the image of Him who created us.”’ 
Now, manifestly, to be renewed means that we 
receive again, and become repossessed of something 
that we once had but have long lost. Now we 
know that the race of beings to which we belong 
possessed at first that very image of God which 
Christ now has, and after which we, the deformed 
and defaced children of men, are renewed again in 
our regeneration. The Type, the normal type, was 
created once for all in Adam; and it is simply 
restored, ennobled, established, and perpetuated 
in Jesus Christ ; and it is not so much created anew 
in each regenerate soul, as it is individually and 
increasingly assumed or “ put on.”” “‘ Put on,’’ says 
Paul, “ put on the new man, which is renewed in 
knowledge after the image of Him that created 
him.” 

The regeneration is in Scripture accounted far 
more glorious than the creation because there is 
in it a vastly greater display of Divine power, and 


30 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


wisdom, and love. If there were less and more 
with the Almighty, it might well be said that it took 
far more power and wisdom to renew than to create 
a soul. At creation the soul was soft, pliant, 
ductile, impressible, responsive: the clay had not 
yet hardened into a “stony heart,’’ and no such 
strange and supernatural instrumentalities were 
needed to create the soul after the Image of God, 
no such instrumentalities of fear and hope, pain 
and sweetness, chastisement and comfort; and no 
such priceless labours as are represented by the 
Cross and Spirit of Jesus Christ. “ You hath He 
quickened,’’ exclaims the Apostle, ‘‘ quickened by 
the same mighty power which wrought in Christ 
when He raised Him from the dead. Even when 
we were dead in sin, God hath quickened us together 
with Christ.’’ And again to signalise and. distin- 
guish the grace of regeneration it is said—‘‘ which 
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God.” ‘“‘ And if 
children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs 
with Christ ’’: predestinated and begotten of the 
Father to be conformed to the image of His Son. 

And now, my brethren: 

(x) From all this let us learn first what I shall 
call a scientific or a philosophical lesson. 

We must all have been struck as we looked upon > 
Nature, and read the daily increasing revelations of 
science—I say we must all have been struck with 


THE IMAGE OF GOD ) 31 


the human cast and character of all created things. 
All things seem as if they had been designed by 
a vast Human Mind, and made by an All-Mighty 
Human Hand. Every science in every one of its 
discoveries opens up. more and more of the Adamic 
character of universal nature. | 

Indeed, science could open up nothing were it 
not that she follows the footsteps of a Creator in 
Whose intellectual Image both the universe explored 
and the human explorer are each in their measure 
made. The Divine Creator, the whole creation, 
animate and inanimate, and the scientific student 
are all on one intellectual type and similitude. 
They all hold a fundamental likeness, and a real 
intellectual relationship to one another. ‘‘ God 
geometrises,’’ said Plato. And every philosopher 
and scientific man might with equal piety and 
boldness claim the patronage and example of his 
Maker in the same way. For who has not felt a 
thrill of wonder and surprise, immediately followed 
by a strangely familiar and home-like feeling, as he 
read that in the sun itself as in the farthest fixed 
stars the same chemical elements obtain, the same 
geometrical laws rule, and the same dynamical 
changes are continually taking place as in our own 
laboratories and workshops on the earth! En- 
larged as his horizon has become, Man is still the 
measure of all things; but he is so, and after all 
discoveries are made will still remain so, because 


82 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


he himself is made in the Image of Him Who made 
all things. Scriptural Christology and natural 
science in all her departments must see eye to eye, 
must combine and co-operate before either becomes 
crowned and complete: since the one studies the 
Creator of all things in His Divine and Human 
Natures, and the other studies the Creation, so full 
in all its parts, of a Divinely-Human, a God-Man 
cast and character. The truth, here too, is in 
** Jesus.”’ 

(2) The second lesson is one of a political, judicial, 
and social kind. ‘“‘ Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, 
by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image 
of God made He man.” And again, “ the tongue 
is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith 
bless we God, and therewith curse we men, which 
are made after the similitude of God.” The 
prophets and the apostles here unite in holding up 
a shield over the assailed and insulted image of 
God in man. It is a species of deicide as well as 
murder to lift up our hand against our brother ; and 
it is sacrilege as well as slander to speak evil of our 
neighbour. No price, according to these scriptures, 
no adequate price can be set on the life of the 
youngest child or the oldest man. The poor, the 
outcast, the incurably diseased, the stranger, the 
savage, as well as the newborn infant have all a 
claim upon us in which piety mingles with charity, 
and devotion to God with duty to man. 


THE IMAGE OF GOD 33 


(3) This doctrine of the Divine Image reads a 
lesson also against every hour of temptation. 
For every outward act of sin, every inward consent 
to sin, is another impious repetition of the first 
sin; and, like the first sin, is immediately followed 
by a fresh “fall.” For every sin in a child of 
God strikes at the yet frail and insecure image of 
Christ in the soul: just as every act of sin in the 
unregenerate more effectually defaces the Image of 
God still preserved in them. “ Mortify, therefore, 
your members which are upon the earth:... 
put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the 
new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the 
image of Him that created him.” 

(4) Again, as “ the things that are made”’ are a 
witness to all men concerning Him Who made 
them; and as the Incarnate Son is the express 
and visible Image of the invisible and inaccessible 
Father, so all those who have put on Christ in their 
regeneration are images, illustrations, and simili- 
tudes of Christ to those who have not otherwise 
seen Him. ‘“ He that hath seen Me, hath seen the 
Father,’ said His express Image. And if we were 
all that we ought to be we could say the same— 
“he that hath seen us hath seen our Saviour.” 
For every believer is in his own measure a visible 
image of his Invisible Lord. ‘ Ye are the light 
of the world.”’ 

(5) But if the history of the Divine Image in 

| 


384 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


man is in many respects a humbling history, yet, 
with all that, it has many cheering and sustaining 
and ennobling things to say to us; and I close this 
discourse with recalling to your thoughtful and 
adoring minds one of the chief: “‘ We know that 
all things work together for good to them that love 
God, to them who are the called according to His 
purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also 
did predestinate to be conformed to the image 
of His Son, that He might be the first-born among 
many brethren.” 


III 
THE STRAPPADO 


** All my bones are out of joint.’’—Ps. xxii. 14. 


In old and evil days, there was a diabolical instru- 
ment of torture in Spain, called the Strappado. 
And that cruel instrument was worked in this 
wicked way. The poor victim was first hoisted up 
to a great height, by means of ropes and pulleys; 
and then he was suddenly dashed to the ground, 
till every bone in his body was torn out of joint, 
and broken in pieces. And the name of the Spanish 
strappado has passed into the English language, 
because the old preachers of that day frequently 
employed the illustration of the strappado in their 
experimental sermons. As thus Goodwin: ‘“‘ Now, 
his lusts, both of body and mind, do strappado a 
sinner’s expectations. That is to say: his sinful 
imaginations hoist up his expectations of pleasure 
to a great height; and then, suddenly, he is let 
fall. For, when the sinner comes to enjoy his high 
expectations, they always prove themselves to be 
such flat and empty things, that his soul, being 
35 


86 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


completely cheated, says to itselfi—And is this all! 
Thus, always, do a sinner’s high expectations strap- 
pado him, till his spirit is simply dashed to pieces 
within him.’’ 

So far as I know, the Spanish strappado was 
never imported into Scotland or England. But if 
we have not the scaffoldings, and the pulleys, and 
the ropes, of that inhuman instrument among us, 
we have plenty of those personal experiences which 
are so vividly and so forcibly illustrated by those 
scaffoldings and pulleys, and ropes and broken 
bones. For we have plenty of high expectations 
followed by deep disappointments ; plenty of great 
and towering ambitions, followed by great depres- 
sions; plenty of high hopes followed by low 
despairs; plenty seekings of great things for our- 
selves, followed by small and heart-starving results. 
Till it has been powerfully impressed upon me that 
the Spanish strappado may have some important 
lessons to read to us in our own land, and in our 
own day.’ 

Well, to begin with :—such are we, and such is 
this present life of ours, that lawful enough pursuits, 
and lawful enough pleasures, not seldom become 
our very worst strappados. As Goodwin says: 
“Pleasures that are quite lawful to us become 
altogether unlawful and unsatisfying, when our 
affections and our imaginations are too frequently 
and too vehemently set upon them.’”’ There is no 


THE STRAPPADO 37 


need for me to put a name upon such pleasures: 
every man’s own conscience will name them to him. 
The sweetest and the most allowable thing on 
earth has become an absolute strappado to some 
men. I will not name it, lest you be not able to 
bear it. But all readers of Luther will remember 
that he is very bold about it, and tells us his own 
strappadic experience of it. 

Again, in a commercial country like ours, first 
the pursuit of wealth, and then the possession 
of wealth, strappados many men’s souls. Many 
such men have lived to confess, and say that when 
they were children, they thought as children, and 
understood as children. They thought, when they 
had attained to great wealth, how happy they would 
be. They thought that when once they had a 
great house full of vessels of gold and silver, with 
horses and carriages at their doors, and troops of 
friends around their table, then it would be heaven 
upon earth with them. But when they became 
rich men, all those childish visions of perfect blessed- 
ness fled away. The Psalmist saw multitudes of 
such strappadoed men all around him in his day, 
and his lament over them was this: “ Verily every 
man, at his best estate, is altogether vanity. Surely 
every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are 
disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and 
knoweth not who shall gather them.’ And our 
Lord also has this warning word to all such men: 


388 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


“Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be required 
of thee: then whose shall those things be, which 
thou hast provided? ”’ At the same time, there 
is no nobler pursuit on earth than the pursuit of 
riches, if they are pursued in order that they may 
be spent on God and man, on the Church of Christ, 
and on His poor. The higher such men climb, the 
nearer heaven they rise; and they shall never know 
disappointment nor defeat. All success to all 
such men as work with their hands, or their heads, 
that they may have to give to him that needeth ! 

On another side of human life, what a strappado 
the pursuit of praise and fame is to many men 
among us. Take this true illustration. A friend 
of mine, a minister in England, became absolutely 
intoxicated with the ambition to write a great book 
on a great subject. When, after years of neglect 
of his pulpit and his pastorate in his devotion to 
his book, he was in Edinburgh and called on me, 
for hour after hour he poured out to me about his 
coming masterpiece. But when it came out, his 
book only received one little scurvy review in one 
obscure London newspaper. When I next saw 
my friend, I scarcely knew him,—so shrunk was 
he, both in body and in mind. He was like our 
text: he had had such a fall that all his bones 
were out of joint. 

You will often see the same thing in preachers 
and public speakers. A member of Assembly, 


THE STRAPPADO 39 


say, has laboured for weeks at a great speech, 
which is to make his reputation. But when he 
enters the advertised hall, the house is empty. 
And he suffers such a fall from his pride that 
moment that he can scarcely command his strength 
enough to finish the fourth part of what he had 
written with such labour and such expectation. 
The pulpit also is the sure strappado of the popu- 
larity-hunting preacher. Even if he is puffed up, 
for a time, the time soon comes for another to arise 
who wholly eclipses him, till he lies with broken 
bones at the foot of his forgotten and forsaken 
pulpit. The higher his ambition hoisted him up, 
the deeper and the more heart-breaking is his fall. 
Let these examples of strappado suffice. Every 
man whose eyes are open will see plenty of such 
examples all around him. And he is a happy man, 
who is not such an example himself, 

“God,” says Goodwin, “had a whole book 
written about the strappado in Israel, and He 
employed King Solomon to be His penman in that 
pathetic book. No man was ever hoisted higher 
than King Solomon, and no man had ever a sadder 
fall. Just hear Solomon about himself in that 
matter. ‘I said in my heart, Go to, now, I will 
prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure. 
.. . I sought in mine heart to give myself unto 
wine and to women. ...I also made me great 
works: I builded me houses: I planted me vine- 


40 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


yards; ...I got me servants and maidens, and 
had servants born in mine house: also I had great 
possessions of great and small cattle above all that 
were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me silver 
and gold: ...I gat me men singers and women 
singers, and all the delights of the sons of men... . 
So I was great, and I increased more than all that 
were before me in Jerusalem. ... And whatso- 
ever mine eyes desired I kept not from them: 
I withheld not my heart from any joy.’”’ And so 
on—chapter after chapter. 

Don’t you envy Solomon? We all do. But . 
Solomon’s book is not yet finished. For, as we 
read on we come to this. ‘“‘ Then I looked on all 
the works that my hands had wrought: and, behold, 
all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there 
was no profit under the sun. Therefore I hated 
my life, because it was all vanity and vexation of 
spirit. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied 
with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with 
increase: this also is vanity. The sleep of a 
labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or 
much; but the abundance of the rich man will not 
suffer him to sleep. Vanity of vanities, saith the 
preacher, all is vanity.’’ The word strappado is 
not found in all the Hebrew Bible; but the thing 
was never better experienced and described than 
in the words of the Preacher, the son of David, 
King in Jerusalem. Just read his bitter book for 


THE STRAPPADO AY 


yourselves and see how full of lessons it is to you 
all, be you King or subject, labouring man or master, 
rich or poor, young or old. 

There is not much that can properly be called 
Gospel in Solomon’s autobiography. At the same 
time the Preacher was not left wholly without 
hope for himself, and for men like himself. And 
what light there is in his dark book is all the brighter 
because of its so black background. For Solomon’s 
own sake, we seize eagerly on such utterances of 
his broken heart as these: ‘‘ I came to see,’ he 
says, ‘“‘that wisdom excelleth folly, as light ex- 
celleth darkness.”” And again: “God hath made 
everything beautiful in its season: and it is God’s 
will that every man should enjoy the good of his 
labour: and a man’s labour, and his good from it, 
are the gifts of God to him.”” Again: “ Better is 
an handful with quietness to enjoy it, than both 
hands full, with travail and vexation of spirit.” 
Again: ‘ Better is a poor man, if he is a wise man, 
than an old and foolish king, who will not be ad- 
monished.’”’ And this comes in about public 
worship, to which Solomon betook himself when he 
had learned the vanity of a life without religion: 
“Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of 
God, and be more ready to hear than to give the 
sacrifice of fools. Be not rash with thy mouth, and 
let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before 
God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: 


42 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


therefore let thy words be few.’”’ Also: ‘“‘ When 
thou vowest a vow to God, defer not to pay it: pay 
that which thou hast vowed.”’ 

And, with all his disappointments in life, Solomon 
was not so embittered as you would expect to see 
him. “ Behold it is good and comely for a man 
to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his 
labour. Every man also, to whom God hath given 
riches and wealth, let him rejoice and enjoy his 
riches: for they are the gift of God.”’ And again 
that beautiful passage: ‘‘Go thy way, eat thy 
bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry 
heart. Let thy garments be always white: and 
let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with 
the wife thou lovest. And whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, do it with all thy might.’”’ Again: 
“A good name is better than riches.” Again: 
“In the day of prosperity be joyful: but in the 
day of adversity consider.” Again: ‘Cast thy 
bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after 
many days. In the morning sow thy seed, and in 
the evening withhold not thine hand.”’ And then, 
that noble passage so nobly worded: ‘‘ Remember 
now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while 
the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, 
when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them: 
while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, 
be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the 
rain: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden 


THE STRAPPADO 43 


bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the 
fountain: or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then 
shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and 
the spirit shall return to God who gave it. The 
Preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and 
that which was written was upright, even words 
of truth. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments : 
for this is the whole duty of man.” Happy he 
who has learned such wisdom as that out of all his 
liftings up, and castings down ! 


IV 
LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 


. “ Tf thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.” 
—MATT. vi. 22, 23. 


Look to your motives !—our Lord says to us over 
and over again in this chapter. Our Lord’s words 
always go to the bottom of things. They always go 
to the bottom of our hearts. Our Lord’s words 
are always quick and powerful, and sharper than 
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing 
asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and 
marrow: they are discerners also of the thoughts 
and intents of our hearts. Our Lord’s words strip 
our hearts bare of all° affectation and pretence, 
display and insincerity, ostentation and hypocrisy. 
“Thy word, O Lord, is very pure: therefore thy 
servant loveth it.’’ ‘‘ Search me, O God, and know 
my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. And 
see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me 
in the way everlasting.”’ 

Our motives are the secret springs of our hearts. 
Our motives are those hidden things in our hearts 

44 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 45 


that move us to speak and to act. Our lives all 
issue out from our hearts, like so many streams out 
of so many deep and hidden springs: and thus it 
is that we are so often told in the Word of God to 
“keep our hearts with all diligence.’’ And thus it 
is that our Lord’s teaching is so full of all the 
matters of the heart; and especially of the hidden 
motives of the heart. Take good heed of your 
motives, He says three times to us in this single 
passage. Be simple in your hearts, He says to us. 
Be sincere in your hearts. Be pure in your hearts. 
Be not men-pleasers. Be not eye-servants. Be 
not ‘“‘hypocrites.”” Seek not to be seen of men. 
Seek secret places. Seek obscurity. Seek and keep 
silence. Do nothing for the praise, or for the ap- 
proval, or for the rewards of men. Let not your 
left hand know what your right hand doeth. Live 
all your life in the presence of God. Lay open your 
heart to His eye alone. Seek to have praise of God. 
Work for His approval and for His reward, Who 
seeth in secret. ‘‘ The light of the body is the eye: 
if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body 
shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy 
whole body shall be full of darkness.” 

I. Now, men alone, of all God’s creatures on the 
earth, have motives. The sun, and the moon, and 
the stars all move. They all move with the motion 
which their Maker gave to them at the beginning, 
and which He continually conveys to them by His 


46 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


upholding and impelling hand. ‘“ In them hath He 
set a tabernacle for the sun: which is as a bride- 
groom coming out of his chamber. His going forth 
is from the end of the heaven, and there is nothing 
hid from the heat thereof.’’ The fowl of the air 
also, the fish of the sea, all sheep and oxen also— 
they all creep, and walk, and run, and fly, each one 
of them after his kind—but it is never said of any 
of them that they have a motive in what they 
do, or in where they go. They eat and they drink: 
they lie down and they rise up: but they never say— 
“When I awake I am still with Thee!’’ The ox 
knoweth his owner, indeed: and the ass his master’s 
crib; but all the same, they cannot enter into 
their master’s mind with them. They do what by 
bit and bridle he compels them to do; but, with 
it all, they do not consider. They have no under- 
standing. They have no power of contrary choice. 
They were not made in their Maker’s image. Their 
chief end is never said to be to glorify God, and to 
enjoy Him for ever. They have all their appointed 
ends, and they all stand in the same ordinances in 
which they were placed at their creation ; but they 
do not know their own ordinances, nor who ordained 
them. To man alone God saw it good to give 
understanding,—understanding, and conscience, and 
will, and a contrary choice. Alone, of all things 
that live, and move, and have their being in God, 
man is moved by his own motives. 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES Ay 


2. And thus it is that God goes down to our 
motives when He would know us altogether, and 
would discover us, and would conclusively judge us. 
We ourselves make every effort to get at men’s 
motives when we would know them, and would 
judge them. But we cannot wade with any security 
into that deep sea. Men’s motives lie deep down 
beyond our discovery and jurisdiction. God’s 
eye alone can see and search out a motive. We all 
feel that we are not truly known till our motives 
are known. Weall feel that we are not yet fully and 
finally judged till our motives are laid naked and 
open. I may do what seems to your judgment 
right or wrong, praiseworthy or blameworthy— 
but hold your peace about me till you are quite 
sure that you have all my motives laid out under 
your eye. When you praise me, you pain me and 
humiliate me, if my motive was not a pure motive: 
and when you blame me, I appeal from your judg- 
ment to His before whose tribunal all my motives 
lie bare : 

“For I am ware it is the seed of act 

God holds appraising in His hollow palm: 
Not act grown great thence as the world believes, 
Leafage and branchage vulgar eyes admire.”’ 

What I am in my motives, that I really am: 
that, just that, and neither more nor less. And it 
is the prerogative and glory of God to hold all my 
motives, “appraising them” in His righteous 


48 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


hand. ‘Talk no more so exceeding proudly,” 
Hannah prayed and said, “and let not arrogancy 
come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God 
of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.” 
“God weigheth more,’’ says Thomas, “‘ with how 
much love a man worketh: He weigheth the motive 
more than the actual work. He doeth much in 
God’s judgment who loveth much.” And we all 
have by heart Paul’s fine passage on motive under 
the name of Charity in the thirteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians. 

3. Now from all this, it follows as clear as day 
that our true sanctification, our true holiness of 
heart, our true and full and final salvation, all lie in 
the rectification, the simplification, and the purifica- 
tion of our motives. The corruption and pollution 
of our hearts—trace all that down to the bottom, 
and it all lies in our motives: in the selfishness, 
the unneighbourliness, the unbrotherliness, the 
ungodliness of our motives. We are all our own 
motive in all that we do: we are all our own main 
object and our own chief end. And it is just this 
that stains and debases so much that we do. It 
is just this that so pollutes our hearts in the sight 
of God: and it is this that makes all we do so 
polluted in our own eyes, when we look at ourselves 
with the eyes of God. It is this that makes so 
much of our very righteousness to be filthy rags ; 
and it is this inward bondage to bad motives that 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 49 


makes all God’s saints to cry out with Paul under 
their utter wretchedness. Our Lord’s blessedness, 
amid all His labours and burdens and sorrows, 
arose out of this that His motives in all that He did 
were good. His eye was single, and therefore His 
whole body was full of light. He pleased not Him- 
self. He pursued not His own ends. He had all 
His motives outside of Himself, and above Himself. 
He was always, even in His early youth, “ about 
His Father’s business.’”’ He worked for praise, 
and for approval, and for reward indeed—but it 
was never the praise or the approval or the reward 
of men, but always of His Father. And thus it was 
that He had a clean heart, and clean hands, and a 
clean and a peaceful conscience in all that He did; 
and, after His work was finished—because of the 
simplicity, and the purity of His motives in all 
parts of His work—He had such a reception awarded 
Him in His Father’s house as no other son or servant 
of God has ever had. Now, where our Lord was 
pure and perfect, we are still impure and imperfect. 
Where His eye was single, our eye is double; and 
where His body was full of light, our body, at its 
best, is but twilight and darkness. There are all 
degrees of purity and of impurity in our motives. 
But it is he whose motives are purest, and whose 
eye is singlest, who is most prostrated and humiliated 
and overwhelmed with the impure, selfish, un- 
godly mixtures of his own motives. In all he does, 
4 


50 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


when he does his very best, in almsgiving, in fasting, 
in praying, in preaching, and indeed in all his 
actions and words and thoughts—so deeply is it all 
infected with the deadly taint of himself that his 
motives are a constant source of self-despising, self- 
hatred, and self-despair. And just as his Master 
will never be pleased with His disciple till all His 
disciple’s motives are as pure as His own, s9 neither 
can the disciple of Christ ever be pleased with 
himself till he is pure as his Master is pure. 


‘‘Saints purest in God’s eyes 
Are vilest in their own.’’ 


4. “‘ The one thing needful,” then, in all that we 
think and say and do is a good motive. The new 
birth that we must all every day undergo, the one 
all-embracing change of heart that God demands of 
us and offers us in His Son every day, is a complete 
change of end and intention, a completely new 
motive. The fall of man took place when God 
ceased to be man’s motive and man’s end, and when 
each man became his own motive and his own end. 
And the supreme need of all men is just the restora- 
tion to their hearts of God as their true motive 
and their chief end. Every human heart cries with 
Augustine—every human heart in its own language : 
“Thou hast made me for Thyself, and I know no rest 
till I find my rest in Thee. Thou hast made us to 
be moved by one motive, and to be directed by one 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 51 


intention, and to rest, with a perfect rest, in one 
end: and both our motive, and our intention, and 
our rest are in Thee.’’ ‘“* Capable we are of God,” 
says Hooker in one of his magnificent passages 
—‘ capable we are of God both by understanding 
and by will: by understanding, as He is that 
sovereign Truth, which comprehendeth the rich 
treasure-house of all wisdom: by will, as He is 
that God of goodness, whereof whoso tasteth shall 
thirst no more. ... Under man, no creature in 
the world is capable of felicity and bliss. First, 
because their chiefest perfection consisteth in that 
which is best for them, but not in that which is 
simply best, as ours doth. Secondly, because 
whatsoever external perfection they tend unto, it is 
not better than themselves, as ours is. How just 
occasion have we therefore, with the prophet, to 
admire the goodness of God! ‘Lord, what is man, 
that Thou shouldest exalt him above the work of Thy 
hands ’—so far as to make Thyself the inheritance 
of his rest and the substance of his felicity.”’ 
“Whom have I,” exclaims Asaph the psalmist— 
‘“‘whom have I in heaven but Thee! And there 
is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My 
flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is the strength 
of my heart and my portion for ever.” 

5. Now, all serious-minded and _ self-observant 
men will surely say to all this that they know all 
this already and have long known it: they accept 


52 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


all this, and delight to hear it; but the longer they 
live, the more they fail to attain to it. They see 
purity of motive, and simplicity of end, and direct- 
ness of intention, and godliness of life—all shining 
like the sun and the moon and the stars high up 
above them, so high above them that they despair 
of ever rising uptothem. My brethren, be patient : 
be instructed. The new heart of a saint of God 
was never yet attained at a bound. A new life of 
motive, and of disposition, and of intention, and 
of aim and end is not the growth of a day or of a 
year. All this present life is allotted by God to 
His saints to make them a new heart. This inward 
work will fill up your whole life to its last moment,— 
God, till that moment, working in you to will and 
to do, to rectify your motives and to protect and 
purify your ends to the last. Believe that, and 
the great work of your life is already half wrought. 
Believe what God’s purpose with your life is. Lord, 
I believe, help Thou mine unbelief! Believe nobly. 
Believe magnificently. Believe with Christ the 
greatest Believer, and the chiefest Saint. Believe 
that all your life is laid out, and filled up—not and 
never for any earthly and temporal end, but always 
for a heavenly and an everlasting end! Not to 
give you rest, and pleasure, and satisfaction, where 
those ends are not ; but to give you, and to prepare 
you for, these ends where they alone are, where 
they are worthy of you, and where you will be both 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 58 


capable and worthy of them. Threescore years 
and ten, with all their deep providences, ordinations 
from everlasting, searching exercises and subduing 
and weaning experiences of heart, means of grace, 
and foretastes of glory—are all not for one moment 
too much for the perfect sanctification and ever- 
lasting and secure salvation of an immortal soul. 
Ask yourselves then, amid all those things divine 
and human, earthly and heavenly, outward and 
inward—ask yourselves if the one work of your 
life, the one undertaking and achievement of your 
life, is making progress. And you have a sure 
test of your progress just in this question: ‘‘ What 
is my motive in this that I now do? And in this 
that I now suffer? In the light of God, and under 
His eye, why do I do this and that ? What is my 
motive? What is my intention? What is the 
end I have set before myself in this and in that ? ”’ 
And then we shall no longer be as the horse and the 
mule that have no understanding. We shall more 
and more set the Lord before us. We shall say in 
every enterprise, What would my Master have me 
here to do? And we shall answer ourselves: ‘‘ O 
Lord, I am Thy servant: I am Thy servant, and 
the son of Thine handmaid. Thou hast loosed my 
bonds!” At the same time, it is by no means 
necessary to torture ourselves and to be in continual 
bondage to the letter of the law. We do not stop 
at every step of a journey and ask ourselves what 


54 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


place we are going to, and why we are going to that 
place. We weigh our motives well before we start, 
and if they are right we set out; and if they are 
not right, we turn back. But once having made 
up our mind and started, we go on, enjoying the 
way, conversing about many things by the way, 
refreshing and resting ourselves by the way, and 
setting out again on our journey. And let the love 
of our heart be once rightly placed ; let our treasure 
once be in heaven; let our motive once be God and 
our neighbours and not ourselves ; and with many 
halts, and many hungerings and thirstings, with 
many stumblings and falls even, yet our faces are 
still steadfastly set to the end of our journey, and 
the path of the just will lead us at last to our 
journey’send. Walking under the finger-post of the 
golden rule, walking in the light of a single eye and 
a right intention, we shall more and more walk at 
liberty, till all we think, and all we do, is pleasing in 
God’s eyes. 

(1) Now from all this there follow two or three 
plain lessons. And this very plain lesson to begin 
with,—that we cannot, by any possibility, know, so 
as to judge, our neighbours’ motives. God has not 
given us the ability. He has reserved that divine 
ability to Himself. And at his peril, therefore, let 
a man intermeddle with another man’s motives. 
Every human being holds secrets in his heart that 
the day of judgment shall for the first time publish 


LOOK TO YOUR MOTIVES 55 


abroad. Every human being holds in himself a 
whole world of mystery to all his fellows; and 
most of all to those who know him best. Attempt 
to judge no man’s motives, then, for you cannot 
do it. You are a wise man, and a true man, anda 
good man if you can judge your own, and yourself 
on account of them. Judge yourself, then, and you 
shall not be judged ; but judge other men, and with 
what measure you mete it shall be meted out to 
you again. Leave all judgment of other men’s 
motives therefore to the Judge of all the earth,—to 
Him Who will judge you and all men by the thoughts 
and the intents of the heart. 

(2) Again, it is surely a great comfort to a good 
man to know that a good motive makes the smallest 
act both great and good in God’s heart-searching 
sight. Splendid deeds that are blazoned abroad by 
a thousand trumpets are but “splendid sins”’ in 
God’s judgment, unless they are done out of a secret 
motive of true and genuine goodness. Unless love 
to God and to man, unless self-forgetfulness and 
self-conquest, lay at its root, the most far-sounding 
deed that ever any man did was but dust and ashes, 
and far less than that in the sight of God. Whereas 
—one single cup of cold water, one visit, in passing 
the door, to a sick-bed, a salutation on the street, 
a shaft of love and honour and goodwill shot in 
secret over the city or over the sea, for love’s 
sake, and for Christ’s sake: “‘Come, ye blessed 


56 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of my Father: inherit the Kingdom prepared for 
you!” 

(3) And to come back to this chapter for our 
last lesson :—Three times it is told us,—and it must 
therefore be a lesson of the last importance to us 
to learn,—three times over our Lord says of the 
Pharisees: Verily, I say unto you, they have their 
reward. Verily, I say unto you, they have their 
reward. And the third time—Verily, I say unto 
you, they have their reward. And then, over 
against that, our Lord says to His disciples, and 
through them to us: “ Give all your alms in secret : 
fast and pray in secret: seek out secret places: 
and hide yourselves, and all that you do, with your 
Father in secret, and your Father which seeth in 
secret will reward you openly. And, blessed are 
ye, when men, not knowing your good motives, 
shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say 
all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.” 
As much as to say: Go down, if need be to your 
grave, unknown and undiscovered, hated, despised, 
misjudged, misrepresented, misunderstood: only, 
keep your heart hidden with Christ in God: and 
when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then 
shall ye also appear with Him in glory ! 


V 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 


** Work out your own salvation.’’—PHIL, ii. 12. 


ALEXANDER VINET in his exquisite Studies in 
Pascal has this. “\ I) place high up,’ he) says, 
“among the traits that make Pascal’s character 
so eminent, his intense individuality. I place high 
up his great, singular, and outstanding gift of 
always being himself, his high distinction of having 
3 thoughts and principles and experiences of his own. 
Pascal stood upon his own feet if ever man did: 
his philosophy and his religion and his literature 
had their roots deep down in himself, and not in 
another.”’ 

And what Vinet says so excellently of Pascal is 
true, in its measure, of every man: of every man, 
that is, who is a man at all. We all have our own 
individuality. It may not be so intense as Pascal’s : 
it may not be so commanding: it may not be of 
such depth and such strength; but we all have 
our own individuality, great or small, rich or poor. 
*“‘ In a great house there are not only vessels of gold 

57 


58 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and of silver, but also of wood and of earth ’’— 
and you are one of those vessels. In every great 
building also there are foundation stones and cope- 
stones: stones laid away out of sight in the earth 
and other stones that shoot up and shine in the 
sun: lintel-stones, and pillars, and pinnacles: 
there are corner-stones and there are stepping- 
stones—and so on. And you are one or other of 
those stones. 

In a body also, there is the head, and there are 
the feet: there are the arms with the hands: 
there are the eyes and the ears; and some parts are 
comely, and some parts are less comely. And you 
are one of those comely, or less comely, parts. In 
short, you are yourself, and not another. And the 
wisdom of your life, and the success of it, will be 
to discover and to know yourself. ‘“‘ The sounding- 
line,’ to borrow a phrase again from Vinet—“ the 
sounding-line that reaches down to any man’s 
true and proper self is not easily handled,—it is 
not easily let down: it is not easily drawn up, and 
it is not easily read and recorded: it is not easily 
handled, and it is not pleasant to handle it, so dark, 
so double, so full of weeds and tangle is the bottom 
of the inward sea of self,—so absolutely abysmal 
are the depths of each man’s own individuality.” 

To begin with: 

i. You are yourself, and not another in your sin, 
says this great text, by implication if not in as many 


THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 59 


words. Even in that universal sinfulness which 
you share with all mankind you are absolutely 
yourself. ‘ Original sin” is that corruption and 
pollution, that debasement and destruction, of 
human nature which we have all inherited from our 
fathers, and which we transmit to all our children. 
Some men inherit a larger share of human nature 
than others, and with that far more of the corrup- 
tion of human nature. Some men are small and 
slight, poor and incapacious in their natures; 
and their original sin is as their natures are. Other 
men are great men, powerful men, massive men, 
giants standing among dwarfs, lions and tigers 
standing among moles and mice. Some men have 
all a lion’s strength in their sin, and some all a 
_tiger’s cruelty and bloodthirstiness. When they 
sin, it is like a hundred men all sinning at once; 
and when they repent, they melt all our hearts to 
tears. We all are in our human nature just as God 
has seen it good to make us; but, great or small, 
giants or dwarfs, oaks in the forest or the gourds 
of a night—we are all full of sin: we are all “‘ made 
of sin,’ as Andrewes has it; and all that sin, great 
or small, is our own. “‘ My sin is ever before me,” 
sobbed out a gigantic sinner. ‘I am the chief of 
sinners,” agonised another great man and great 
sinner. ‘‘In me,” he said to God’s saints in his 
day, when he was under the sounding-line of God’s 
sanctification—“‘in me there dwelleth no good 


60 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


thing.’’ And you all are yourselves, just as much 
as David, or Paul, or Pascal, or Andrewes, or any 
great sinner of them all. You are not of their size. 
You are not of their immense mental or spiritual 
measurement. You can neither sin nor repent 
like them. Sin and repentance like theirs would 
consume you on the spot. A night, like one of 
David’s nights, would turn you to dust and ashes 
before the morning. But you are what you are, 
and what you have made yourself. Your past life 
is your own; your present heart and character 
are your own; your future intentions and purposes 
and resolutions are known only to yourself and to 
no other man. 

2. And just because your sin and your sinfulness 
are so absolutely your own, so will your salvation be. 
One of the surest signs that your salvation is at 
last begun and well on is your unshakable convic- 
tion that, as to sinfulness, you are alone in the whole 
world, and have no equal, no fellow, and no near 
neighbour. And that sense of aloneness and un- 
approachableness and monstrosity in sin will grow 
upon you as you grow in grace and in the intelligence 
and individuality of grace. The truth is,—it is 
only when you begin to work out your own salvation 
in right earnest that you will discover what great 
men mean when they speak and write about in- 
dividuality. Pascal was by nature a great man,— 
one of the greatest of the sons of men; but after 


i nl a 


THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 61 


he became a subject of grace, after his conversion— 
he became an immensely greater man and an im- 
mensely more individual man. In depth and in 
grasp of mind, in nobleness and in superbness of 
mind, in the magnificence of the things he now con- 
versed with, and in the grandeur of his ways of 
conversing with them, Pascal was an altogether 
new man. Life and death, redemption and salva- 
tion, grace and truth, sin and righteousness, holiness 
and eternal life, God and man and Jesus Christ, 
became ever-growing realities, and everything else 
to be dreams and vanities to Pascal. Before his 
conversion, Pascal was but one of his own miraculous 
and mathematical machines; but as his salvation 
went on, so did his intellect, and his imagination, 
-and his conscience, and his heart, and his whole 
individuality. And so, in your measure, it has been 
with you. You are now a new creature. You 
belong to a new race of God’s creatures. You 
have been born again. All things have become new 
to you. The eyes of your understanding have been 
opened and anointed. You walk on the earth with 
God. Your conversation is held with God’s saints. 
Your conversation is in heaven from whence you 
look for your Saviour. And now, ever since, how 
you work at your own salvation! What a salva- 
tion younowneed! AndwhataSaviour! Whata 
Bible also, and what preaching! Who is sufficient 
to divide out the divine word henceforth to you? 


62 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


What a Benjamin’s mess you could sit down at 
every Sabbath and still say, Give, Give! What 
prayers you now offer, and say Amen to them! 
What strange, what guilty reading you go through 
in your secret place when your house is asleep! 
Truly, old things are passed away with you! You 
are indeed a wonder to many. Only, go on: go 
on and on in your salvation, in your so secret life, 
in your life so hidden with God. Only go on; 
and you shall surely achieve and attain in the end. 
You have no fellow and no companion and no help- 
méet here. But in your Father’s house there are 
many mansions. And He is surely preparing a place 
for you. Since He has taken your heart so captive 
that you cry to Him night and day, ““ Whom have 
I in heaven but Thee?” surely He will not leave 
your soul in hell, nor always suffer one who loves 
holiness like that to lie down at last in the pit of 
corruption! Surely no! Surely no! 

3. ‘ For ’’—to proceed—“ it is God that worketh 
in you both to will and to do.” 

What a revelation! What a thing to say! 
What a thing for any man to believe to be true 
about himself! What a magnificent life is the life 
of salvation! What grace! What glory! What 
surpassing blessedness! God! God Almighty! 
His very Self, and not another, working in us! 
Working immediately, and with His very own hands 
inus! Awake, thou that sleepest! ‘‘ When I was 


THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 68 


a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, 
I put away childish things.”’ Surely! Who would 
not? For what a workshop, what a laboratory, 
what a forge, what a crucible is the soul of man, 
and my soul! What living materials to be wrought 
upon, and what living tools to work with! And 
what a Workman enters my soul, goes up and down 
in my soul, takes all those tools and instruments 
into His hands, and turns them in upon my soul 
to its salvation! What a Master-Workman work- 
ing in us, and we working in our own souls under 
Him! And our souls all the time the workman- 
ship and the everlasting output of God, and of our- 
selves under God. That, then, is God! That is 
God, and no man ever told me! That is not 
chance, or accident, or mood of my own mind: 
that is not a man, or a man’s book, or a minister’s 
sermon acting on me! That is God with all those 
tools in His hands. That is God at His God-like 
work of making me to will and to do. Making 
me willing and able to pray, to repent, and to reform. 
Making me willing and able to think, to stop and 
consider, to open my eyes, to look behind and before, 
to take that right step, to stop and take back that 
wrong step, to enter my own soul and to see what 
still lies to be done by me in my own soul, to stand 
no more idle, to work while it is day,—seeing the 
night cometh when no man can work. 


64 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


My heart and soul, then, is the work-stuff, the 
work, and the workshop of God, and I knew it not! 
No one ever took me and told me. And I had 
almost misunderstood and missed my own and 
individual salvation altogether! What were my 
tutors and my governors, my preachers and my 
pastors, my father and my mother all the time 
thinking about, and I unsaved! And I on their 
hands, and did not know the very meaning of the 
word Salvation; nor how to picture it to myself, 
nor how to work it, nor where it was worked out, 
nor under what Master-Workman! But while 
once I was blind, now 1 see. Thatis God! Now! 
That is God at His work within me. That blow 
of His hammer that has broken my hard heart! 
That stroke of His axe at the root of my life! That 
plunge of His pruning-knife! That furnace seven 
times heated! That overthrow, that shipwreck, 
that utter desolation, that hope that now maketh 
me all my days ashamed! That so bitter cup to 
wean me from all the cups of earth, since when I 
have drunk on earth the cup of heaven! And 
without ceasing, God works, as the Psalmist dis- 
covered God in his day, and in his own soul. The 
everlasting God !—He neither slumbers nor sleeps, 
sang David in one of his so divine and so individual- 
istic psalms. And He is the same to-day. Abso- 
lutely without ceasing He works. He visits us in 
our very dreams, does He not? and our reins 


THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 65 


instruct us in the night seasons, do they not? As 
if He had no other man’s salvation on His hands 
but ours! We see, we hear, we taste, we feel Him 
and His work in us every day and every night, and 
every hour and moment of the day and night. 

“To will and to do.’ To have us hew down 
that dead tree under His direction. To have us 
plant deep under His direction that living root. 
To lay the living plummet to that living wall. To 
lay in living mortar that living stone. To plane 
a living plank here, and to fix in a living nail there. 
To make such and such a call on our neighbour, 
an errand or a call of reconciliation, and repair, and 
recognition, and reception: to write such and such 
a letter of love: to send such and such a sanctified 
and sanctifying gift: to make such and such a sin- 
pardoning apology and redress: to deny ourselves 
such and such a self-indulgence: to take up, without 
a whisper of complaint, such and such an every- 
day cross: to redeem such and such a time for 
prayer, and so on and so on—in short, to work out, 
without ceasing, our own salvation—God, all the 
time, working in us both to will and to do. 

4. Now, with all that going on within me, you 
come to me with your snares and your seduction, 
with your offers and your invitations. Come with 
us, you say. Join with us, you say. Share with 
us. Cast in thy lot among us. Beoneofus. Put 
away thy scruples, you say. Do not be a puritan. 


66 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


God is love. God is the Father of all. Godis nota 
hard Master. You know the way that men speak. 
You know with what softness and with what self- 
indulgence some men take their salvation. You 
have heard it all before. You were well-nigh lost by 
hearing it, and giving ear to it. No,—you say with 
all civility, but with’ a great firmness:—No! I 
cannot come. The salvation of my soul is precious 
to me, and I dare not endanger it. I have made 
up my mind: I have made my choice, and you 
must not tempt me to turn back. “ Explain 
Vinet’s words, ‘ The piety of Pascal was a passion.’ 
Compare Paul’s words, ‘ Yea, what carefulness it 
wrought in you; yea, what clearing of yourselves ; 
yea, what indignation; yea, what fear; yea, what 
vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea, what re- 
venge.’ Compare this also out of the Serious Call: 
‘Unless our passions are bent on our salvation we 
shall scarcely be saved.’’? 1 We are working out 
our salvation in our classes this very week by the 
study and the practice of such questions as these. 

5. The Apostle Paul was Greek scholar enough, 
and preacher and pastor enough, and experienced 
Christian man enough to choose his words well. 
And he accents and emphasises and underscores 
and strengthens his words in the text in every 
possible way. Work out your own salvation, he 


1 This was an extract from the notes which Dr. Whyte had 
given to his classes to guide their studies for the week. 


THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS SALVATION 67 


says, with a weight and a solemnity that we do not 
fully feel in the English. Work it out to the very 
end, he wrote to the Philippians; and they, with 
their quick, new-born intelligence, took up his 
passionate appeal in all its truth and power and 
impressiveness. Never stop working at your salva- 
tion, he writes. Never fall asleep at it. Never 
say that you have attained and are already perfect, 
else you are no converts, and will be no crown of 
mine! Never say that your calling and election are 
sure. Stand fast: and having done all, stand still 
fast. Endure to the end. Work on at your own 
soul, while a spot or a speck, a taint or a tarnish of 
sin is left in your soul. ‘‘ The perseverance of the 
saints is made up of ever new beginnings.” No. 
There is no fear of any true converts of this Apostle 
saying that they are already perfect. The chief 
fear is that they who work hardest at their own 
‘ salvation should come to give it up through despair. 
But they must not. That is not to be despaired of 
surely,—that which God has on His hands and on 
His heart. And of all the things He has on His 
hands and on His heart, there is nothing so near 
His heart and so tied to His hands as the salvation 
of that man who works without ceasing at his own 
salvation. Be not too much discouraged then,— 
O thou worker !—at such a discouraging work! 
Do not despair. Do not throw down the slow work 
in disgust and despair. Work on at it. Work it 


68 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


out, for it is God which worketh in you to will and 
to do. And, I am persuaded that neither death 
nor life, nor things present nor things to come, shall 
be able to separate you from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Work on then, till 
God Himself shall make perfect that which con- 
cerneth you. 


VI 


THE ELEMENT OF TIME IN OUR 
DEVOTIONS 


“‘ What, could ye not watch with Me one hour ?’’-——Matr. 
XXVI1. 40. 


Our Redeemer was in the Garden of Gethsemane. 
His hour was come. He knew that His agony was 
fast approaching Him, and He felt as if He would 
be strengthened, somewhat, if He had two or three 
of His disciples near Him. But no! Even that 
slight support was to be denied our Saviour in that 
awful hour. His three chosen disciples were within 
a stone’s-cast of the scene of His agony; but then, 
they were all three fast asleep, that the Scripture 
might be fulfilled—‘ I have trodden the winepress 
alone, and of the people there was none with Me.” 
Their Master did not arm the seventy and set them 
to defend the garden-gate. He did not ask the 
eight, even, to do more than just to sit down and 
wait inside the garden-gate, to see what the end 
of that midnight would be. And He only asks 
Peter and James and John that they shall stay 


within earshot of Him for “ one hour,” and shall 
69 


70 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


keep awake for His sake. Nay,—so little exacting 
is their Master that lonely midnight, that if Peter, 
alone, will ‘“‘ watch ’’ with Him, He will be satisfied. 
If He had returned, and found Peter on his knees 
when He Himself rose off His face in a sweat of 
blood—the sight of Peter, so employed, would have 
been more to Peter’s lonely Master than an angel 
from heaven strengthening Him. But as it was— 
when He came to Peter, He found that disciple 
three times fast asleep. Peter! who had pro- 
tested at the table, only an hour before, that, as 
for him, he would die with his Master. 

Now “all these things happened to them for 
ensamples; and they are written for our admoni- 
tion on whom the ends of the world are come.” 
And it is not for nothing—you may depend upon 
it—that our Lord here lays such pointed stress on 
“one hour’s ’’ watching and praying, that night in 
Gethsemane. I do not think it is possible for any 
of His true disciples, among ourselves, to read this 
solemnising Scripture without having his conscience 
struck sore with that rebuking word—“ one hour ”’ 
—that night of our redemption. Yes: you may 
depend upon it—this remonstrance here addressed 
to Peter has been recorded not for his sake alone, 
but for our admonition and instruction also. 

But there is a previous question even to that— 
and itis this. Are we, at all, the manner of men to 
whom the remonstrance of the text is likely to be 


TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS 71 


addressed ? For our Lord by no means addressed 
this remonstrance to all His disciples that night. 
Bynomeans. Hehad many good and true disciples, 
in Bethany and in Jerusalem, to whom He said 
nothing about watching and praying ‘“ one hour ”’ 
with Him that night. He only asked Peter and 
James and John to do that. He did not even ask 
the eight in the distance to watch and pray. He 
simply bade them sit down and wait for Him and 
for the three. The eight, in the distance, were 
good and true disciples; but then they were only 
ordinary men. They were, comparatively speaking, 
commonplace men in their personal religion, and 
in everything else. But the chosen three, on whom 
that “hour ’’ of watching and prayer was laid that 
night, they were far from being ordinary men, or 
men with a commonplace call. James, the brother 
of John, was foreordained to fall under Herod’s 
murderous sword, almost immediately. And that 
hour in the neighbourhood of his Master’s agony, 
and one hour, more or less like it, every night after 
it, would have prepared James for his martyrdom 
as nothing else could possibly have prepared him. 
And like James, you may have some martyrdom, 
of some kind, soon to come upon you. And that 
late hour every night, which you are at present 
wasting on unnecessary sleep, or in worse ways, 
may be the only thing that can possibly prepare 
you for what is fast coming upon you. Peter, 


72 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


again, was Peter. And if any man in all the dis- 
cipleship of that day needed to watch and pray, it 
was surely Peter. You know what manner of man 
Peter was. He was full of all kinds of capacities 
and possibilities. There was simply nothing that 
Peter might not live to do, once he was made 
ready to do it. But he was not ready yet,—not by 
along way. No: nor will ever be ready, without 
many a midnight of watching and prayer. Peter, 
like ourselves, is full of the warmest words—on 
occasion. Now vowing away his life at the Lord’s 
Table; and then, before the cock crows, denying 
the Lord that bought him. Above all things, 
Peter needed that hour of prayer that night, and, 
neglecting it, and turning it into sleep, his tempta- 
tions and his opportunities, all that night, and all 
next morning, descended upon him, and found 
him utterly unprepared to meet them. Now you 
may be another Peter in our day; and, if you are, 
one hour alone with Christ, every night, will be the 
making of you; and nothing else will. 

Or again, you may be more like John. You may 
be a man of a meditative, mystical, spiritual mind. 
Now if that is the nature of your mind, it will 
never come to its best out in the world, keeping 
late hours with the men and women of the world. 
No, nor even staying at home and reading, late 
at night, the books and papers of the world. With 
such a rare mind as yours is, you must be much at 


TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS 73 


home, and much alone; and when you are alone 
you must be religiously, and spiritually, and de- 
votionally occupied. In no other way will you 
ever come to the full height of your high calling. 

But on the other hand, if you are, and are always 
to be, but an ordinary disciple; if you are to be 
only one among many ; if you are content to remain 
characterless and unrecognisable among the multi- 
tude; then you may, with the multitude, escape 
Gethsemane, and all its late and lonely hours of 
watching and prayer. Only, make up your mind, 
and count the cost. For, in that case, escaping 
the preparation, you must not expect to be found 
able ever to suffer much, or to do much, in any way, 
for Jesus Christ, and for His Church in this world. 
And if you do not suffer with Him, you must not 
expect to reign with Him. 

Now a whole hour, it must be admitted, is a long 
time. But it is not so much the length of the time: 
it is rather this—that we really do not know what 
to do with ourselves for a whole hour. We are 
like Santa Teresa. She made use of a sandglass ; 
and she tells us, in her Autobiography, how she used © 
to glance at the glass to see if it was not nearly | 
run down yet, so that she might escape out of her | 
place of prayer with a good conscience. Now, like 
Teresa, we have it on our conscience that we ought 
to be alone with ourselves, and with God, for some 
decent length of time every night; but then, there 


74 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


is no hour of all the twenty-four that goes so slowly, 
and that hangs on our hands so heavily, as just the 
hour of secret prayer. So much is that the case 
that it is an immense service done to us when any 
author, or any preacher, directs us how to get 
that dreary and guilty hour filled up, so as to 
make it somewhat less of a task, somewhat less 
of a torture. 

You might try this. ‘You might begin by cutting 
down the hour. If a whole “ hour ”’ is too long for 
you—take half an hour: or even to begin with, 
take a quarter. Christ is not a hard taskmaster. 
He will not bind you to a hard-and-fast bargain— 
if you are unwilling. And besides, you can get 
through a great deal in half an hour; or even ina 
quarter of an hour. You can name a great many 
forgotten people, and a great many forgotten things, 
in half an hour or even in a quarter. You can go 
over your past day, in a rough way, in much less than 
an hour. In very much less, if you are in a hurry. 
Then again, there is this to lighten and alleviate 
the strain. You do not need to lay it on your 
conscience that you must be on your actual knees 
all the time. Not at all. Rise up. Walk about 
the room. Go out and look up at the stars. Say— 
“What is man that Thou art mindful of him ? ” 
Come in again. Sit down. Take help out of 
Andrewes, or another. Lift up your hands. Lift 
up your eyes Recite a promise. Chant a psalm. 


TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS 75 


Say over an Olney or a Wesley Hymn to yourself. 
Do anything you like. Prayer is the most elastic 
exercise possible. Communion with God has no 
hard-and-fast rules and regulations. And if, at the 
end of the half-hour, you are beginning to have some 
liberty, and possibly to feel some delight—go on. 
You have still another half-hour before you. Never 
mind the clock striking. Tell it to strike loud for, 
those who should be home by this time and in their 
beds. Say to it as Teresa said afterwards—“ Strike 
on, for by thy striking thou art but telling me 
that I am another hour nearer my Heavenly 
Bridegroom ! ” 

Then there is your Bible to help you to fill up 
your hour. And once you have begun, really, to 
read your Bible—one hour each night will be far 
too short. You will forget hours and everything 
else many a night over your Bible—once you have 
begun to read it to yourself alone. The Psalms, 
for instance. The best of the autobiographic and 
experimental Psalms were written late at night, 
and when the Psalmists were alone with God. 
And as they were written, so they must be read. 
And then, the Gospels. And after them, the 
Epistles. | 

Take your Bible, then, to help carry you through 
your hour of prayer. And as you sit down, say— 
Come, my Lord: for I have an hour free to-night 
for Thee, and for my own soul. And I will promise 


76 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


you that you also will soon have proved it true— 
““My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and 
fatness: and my mouth shall praise Thee with 
joyful lips, when I remember Thee upon my bed, 
and meditate on Thee in the night-watches.”’ 

Then again, there is this well-approved way of 
filling up the hour, and of giving an intense interest 
to it: 

“Let not sleep come upon thy languid eyes, 

Before each daily action thou hast scanned. 
What done; what left undone ; what done amiss. 


From first to last examine all ; and then, 
Blame what is wrong, in what is right rejoice.” 


Now if a Pagan philosopher, whose lot was cast 
by God’s Providence five centuries before Christ, 
practised that self-scrutiny for an hour every night, 
and taught the devout habit to all his disciples— 
what manner of person in that matter ought we 
to be? That was Pythagoras. And Xenocrates 
also, Diogenes tells us, used to meditate with 
himself several times a day, and always allotted 
one hour of each night to silence. 

As we have seen—their Master did not expect 
all His disciples to watch with Him that night; 
but He did ask and He did expect Peter and James 
and John to do so. And in like manner, there is 
one class of people among us who should have no 
difficulty in filling up their one hour every night of 
watching and prayer. “‘ Hast thou considered my 


TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS 77 


servant Job? ’’—the Hearer of prayer asks at all 
fathers and mothers among us. For when Job’s 
sons and daughters were invited out to a supper and 
a dance, did Job go to sleep, do you suppose, at his 
usual hour, and with his usual repose of mind ? 
Far from that. For what do we find written con- 
cerning Job, for our learning? We find this. As 
soon as Job’s children had started off in their gay 
clothing, and in their high spirits, their old father 
that moment went out to his flock, and took a 
lamb according to the number of his sons and 
daughters, and offered sacrifice for them all to God. 
“For who knows,” he said, “‘ what temptations 
my children may meet with before they return 
home?” And then he sprinkled the atoning 
blood in the direction of the house of feasting, and 
ceased not from his intercessions till he saw his 
children home at sunrise—if the suppers in the land 
of Uz lasted so long. And not on their nights of 
late hours only, but every night, as our children 
grow up around us,—what a privilege, what an 
absolute necessity, it is for a father and a mother 
to have an hour set apart in which to reflect, and 
to plan, and to pray, concerning their children. 
You might do this, my friends, an hour every night. 
How many children has God given you to bring 
up for Him? and what are their names? and at 
which ages have they arrived? You might take 
Susanna Wesley’s way. She took Jacky apart 


78 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


one night, she tells us—and Charles another. And 
her two boys are now known to all the world as John 
and Charles Wesley. And she read and prayed 
both “with and for’’ her whole family, an hour 
each night. And when they were old enough, they 
shared their mother’s work among the younger 
children. You might begin to do something like 
that ; and who can tell how God would pay you 
your wages? The hour may hang heavy on other 
people’s hands. It cannot possibly hang heavy 
on a parent’s hands. Go over, towards God, 
the things in your children that are causing you 
anxiety. The things that, if they go on, will yet 
bring down your grey hairs with sorrow to the 
grave. As also, go over the things in yourself, 
that are destroying your influence with your children. 
““T will behave myself,’’ said the Psalmist, “ wisely 
in a perfect way. O when wilt Thou come to me? 
And I will walk within my house with a perfect 
heart.”’ 

Whoever you are,—parent or child, old or young, 
sinner or saint,—give yourself to prayer. Let no 
distaste for prayer turn you away from it. Let no 
want of practice, let no difficulty in it, make you 
give it up in despair. Let no greatness of sin, or 
frequency of sin, frighten you away from the 
Throne of Grace. | 

Begin to-night: and never, on any account, give 
it over. Whatever else you do, or do not do— 


TIME IN OUR DEVOTIONS 79 


in God’s name I beseech you to pray. Pray, and 
you will pray yourself into a life of pardon and 
holiness, till you pray yourself into heaven itself. 
And begin to-might. Only try one week of it, and 
then judge for yourselves. 


vil 
A WONDER IN HEAVEN 


a3 


“There appeared a great wonder in heaven... .”— 
REV. Xli. I-5. 
A WONDER is something that arrests, and surprises, 
and astonishes. A wonder is something unex- 
pected, unprepared for, unprecedented, and sur- 
passing all our experience. The whole world is full 
of wonder to a child. ‘‘ When I was a child, I 
spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought 
as a child: but when I became a man, I put away 
childish things.’”’ But the Apostle put away the 
wonders of his childhood, only to be taken possession 
of by far greater wonders: till, in the ripe manhood 
of his mind and heart, he is not able to put words 
upon the wonders he has seen. ‘“‘ Whether in the 
body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God 
knoweth,—such an one caught up to the third 
heaven. How that he was caught up into paradise, 
and heard unspeakable words, which it is not possible 
for a man to utter.” 

1. “I saw a great wonder in heaven,” says John 


also. But before we come to that—Heaven, itself, 
80 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 81 


is a great wonder. Just heaven itself. Heaven is 
the seat and centre indeed of wonder. Wonder 
has her very throne and empire in heaven. Heaven 
is the true wonderland. Everything that is really 
wonderful, everything that surpasses, everything 
that captivates, everything that enthralls, every- 
thing that transcends,—it is all collected into heaven. 
Even to paint a far-off picture of heaven, prophets 
and apostles have been compelled to lay this whole 
earth under contribution, for forms and colours, 
for riches and beauty, wherewith to delineate and 
adorn their theme. As thus: “For brass I will 
bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver. Violence 
shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor 
destruction within thy borders: but thou shalt call 
thy walls Salvation, and thy gates, Praise. The 
sun shall no more be thy light by day: neither for 
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but 
the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy 
God thy glory. Thou shalt no more be termed 
Forsaken: neither shall thy land be termed 
Desolate : but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and 
thy land Beulah.”’ And then, the New Testament 
seer has this splendid passage on this same subject. 
“And I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, 
coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as 
a bride adorned for her husband. Having the 
glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone 


most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
6 


82 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


crystal. And the city was pure gold, like unto 
clear glass. And the twelve gates were twelve 
pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and 
the street of the city was pure gold, as it were trans- 
parent glass. And he shewed me a pure river of 
water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the 
throne of God, and of the Lamb. And the throne 
of God and of the Lamb shall be in it: and His 
servants shall serve Him. And they shall see His 
face, and His name shall be in their foreheads.” 
And more than all that. For it is written that 
““Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the things which God 
hath prepared for them that love Him.” 

2. But the “great wonder’”’ that John saw in 
heaven was not heaven itself, wonderful as heaven 
itself was. The greatest wonder that John saw in 
heaven was, in his own words, a man-child, with 
whom a woman had travailed in birth, and who had 
now been caught up unto God and to the throne of 
God. John had been greatly favoured. Greatly 
favoured! For he had seen the two extremes—so 
to call them—of his Master’s life. And these are 
some of those extremes that John had in his mind, 
and in his heart, as he stood and looked at that great 
wonder. The one extreme was this. ‘“‘ And she 
brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him 
in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, 
because there was no room for them in the inn. 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 83 


The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
head. Now, in the morning, as He returned into 
the city, he hungered.’’ And then, the Garden of 
Gethsemane; and then, His arrest and His trial; 
and then, His crucifixion. 

And now, there is the other extreme! ‘“ He 
humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God hath 
highly exalted Him and hath given Him a name 
which is above every name: that, at the name of 
Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, 
and things in earth, and things under the earth: and 
that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Our 
hearts are surely made of stone, since we can be 
told all that, without one thrill either of wonder or 
of worship. But the day is at the door, when He 
will have His revenge on us for all our indifference 
towards Him, and all our unbelief about Him. A 
day when every knee shall bow, and when we shall 
all fail at His feet as dead. These dark scales that 
are sealed down so close on our eyes to-day shall fall 
off every eye on that day. And every eye shall see 
Him, and shall see nothing else. 


“The bride eyes not her garment, 
But her dear bridegroom’s face; 
I wili not gaze at glory, 
But on my King of grace,— 


84 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Not at the crown He gifteth, 
But at His piercéd hand: 

The Lamb is all the glory 
Of Immanuel’s land.” 


“Tf { could but look at Him through the keyhole 
of heaven, I would be satisfied,’ says Samuel 
Rutherford in his own intoxicated and enraptured 
way. 

3. But, to me, there will be a far greater ‘‘ wonder ’”’ 
in heaven than the whole of heaven itself. Ay, 
a far greater wonder than that glorified Manchild 
Himself. For, after all, heaven is His Father’s 
house, and His own proper home and inheritance. 
But when I awake, and find myself in heaven— 
that will swallow up all heaven’s other wonders to 
me. Is this, in very deed, myself? Am I, actually, 
and in reality, in heaven? Am I made meet, at 
last, for the inheritance of the saints in light? 
Am I, O my God, at last set free from sin? AmTI 
now to be for ever delivered from that hell-born 
thing that poisoned every hour of my life on the 
earth, and that so blasted, to me, the best joys of 
earth? O, saints and angels of God, say to me 
and assure me, that [am notinadream! Confirm 
me, O ye holy ones, that I am not beside myself! 
Come, all ye shining hosts of His, and see as you 
pass by on your errands of glory—come and see 
if, in all your seven heavens, there is another 
wonder of redeeming love, and saving grace, like me! 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 85 


These, then, will be the first three, as I think, of 
the great wonders that we shall see in heaven. 
Heaven itself: Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, risen 
from the dead, ascended, exalted, and glorified ; 
and, far above all, myself—so every saved sinner 
will say: every saved sinner, that is, who has one 
spark of self-knowledge, and one atom of a truly 
thankful heart. 

4. And then, when once we have time to walk 
about Zion, to tell the towers thereof, to mark her 
bulwarks, and to consider her palaces; and when 
the ministering spirits shall join themselves to us, 
and shall say to us, “See what manner of stones 
and what buildings are here! ’’—we shall answer 
them that we have come out to this gate of God 
to see a sight that they cannot see, and to reflect 
upon a matter that they cannot comprehend. For, 
verily, ‘“ He took not on Him the nature of angels, 
but He took on Him the seed of Abraham.” And 
they will wonder at us, and at what it is that we are 
seeing, as we so long continue to look down at the 
hole of the pit out of which we were digged, and 
at the hole of the rock whence we were hewn. At 
the hole of the pit—and then at the way—there it 
all is as clear as daylight, now,—all the way He has 
led and carried us, till our feet stand within thy 
gates, O Jerusalem! ‘“‘ And thou shalt remember 
all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these 
forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and 


86 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart. 
Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that as a 
man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God 
chasteneth thee.’’ William Cowper counted him- 
self the greatest wonder in all England. “‘I am 
surely the only convert in all England that was ever 
made in a madhouse,” he said. Perhaps so. But, 
Bedlam and all,—to borrow Cowper’s own strong 
word,—there will be saved sinners standing beside 
Cowper on that day, and at that earth-commanding 
gate, who will put both him and his blood-bought 
harp to silence with a conversion, and with an 
after lifetime of God’s forbearance and long-suffer- 
ing—far, far more wonderful than his. 

5. And then, when at another time we stand on 
the sea of glass, and look down into its transparent 
depths—what a wonderful revelation that will be! 
We sang about it this morning. But we have 
forgotten already what we sang about it. For, we 
sang it like men not yet awaked from their sleep, 
so little was the wonder and the worship: so little 
was the faith and the love with which we sang it. 
We sang these wonderful words : 

‘“Thy mercy, Lord, is in the heavens: 
Thy truth doth reach the clouds: 


Thy justice is like mountains great ; 
Thy judgments deep as floods.” 


And we read, and, shame to us to say, wholly 
without emotion, such a magnificent passage as 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 87 


this: ‘‘O the depth of the riches, both of the 
wisdom and the knowledge of God! How un- 
searchable are His judgments, and His ways past 
finding out!’’ But we shall awaken, once we are 
in heaven. For, once we are there, our eyes will 
receive such an unction that they will see down into 
those deep ways of God that were far past our 
finding out on earth. For His ways with us on 
earth are “as high as heaven, what can we do? 
They are deeper than hell, what can we know? ”’ 
But we shall all find out the Almighty to perfec- 
tion in heaven. “There is a path that no fowl 
knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not 
seen. The lion’s whelps have not trod it, nor the 
fierce lion passed by it.’’ And that unfathomable 
path is none other than that wonderful way, both of 
providence and of grace, on which He leads all His 
people home from earth to heaven, and from grace 
to glory. When a pastor is out among his sorely 
afflicted people, he is oftentimes struck absolutely 
dumb before the depth and the darkness of God’s 
judgments. There are times and places where he 
cannot open his mouth, so dark and so full of distress 
are God’s ways with this and that soul. He has 
neither the experience, nor the faith, nor the hope, 
that he would need to have, who would venture 
out as a comforter to those who are going up through 
such great tribulation. God’s ways are sometimes 
so absolutely overwhelming that it sounds cruel 


88 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and heartless to go and repeat promises that are 
never to be fulfilled in this world. 

But the boldest promises in all the believer’s 
Bible will all be fulfilled in heaven, the postponed 
answers to all the promises will be heaped up, 
and made to run over in heaven. And those elect 
saints, whose lives of such suffering were the 
stumbling-stone of their boldest comforters, will 
there be found to God’s incomparable and ever- 
lasting praise. Till that terrible sufferer, who spent 
all his days in a furnace seven times heated, will 
come forth without a hair of his head singed, 
or so much as the smell of the furnace-fire upon 
his garments; and his song, among all the songs of 
the glorified, will for ever be: “O the depth! 
O the depth! O the depth of the wisdom, 
and the knowledge, and the grace of God to 
me 

6. And then, while all these wonders, and all 
these new songs, are surrounding the gates of 
heaven, and are covering the shores of the sea of 
glass, the Word Himself will choose a select dis- 
cipleship of the most seraphic intelligences from 
among the glorified, and will lead them up into the 
council-chamber of the past eternity. And in that 
great chamber there will be disclosed the secret 
wheels—wheel within his wheel—as if a wheel 
were in the midst of a wheel : all the living wheels— 
first of predestination, and then of providence, and 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 89 


then of grace, and then of glory, and every living 
wheel full of eyes within and without. And all 
these mystical wheels working together with such 
silence, with such speed, and with such sureness ; 
and all fulfilling, to perfection, the will and the 
wisdom, and the everlasting love of Almighty 
God: 


‘Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never-failing skill, 
He treasures up His bright designs 
And works His sovereign will. 
Blind unbelief is sure to err 
And scan His work in vain; 
He is His own interpreter, 
And He will make it plain.” 


7, And to complete and crown all, there will be 
the fulfilment of this fine promise, ‘‘ In my Father’s 
house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place 
for you.” And it will be so. For you will all find 
a place prepared for yourselves in heaven. ‘‘ When 
I awake, I shall be satisfied,’’ said the Psalmist, 
and so will you. For one thing—all the affections 
of your hearts will find their full outlet, their full 
delight, and their full fruition, there. 

All your talents also will be multiplied, and 
perfected, and occupied there. Intellectual men are 
unwilling to become old and die; they so enjoy 
the occupations and the operations of their minds ; 
they so delight in the search for truth, and in its 
discovery, that they hate the approach of old age, 


90 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and the very name of death and the grave. But 
not believing, not heavenly-minded men. You 
will see them still learning new languages at three- 
score and ten. You will see their minds still 
opening to new truth at fourscore and ten. And 
they are wise and right, those probationers of im- 
mortality. For their ‘‘ death,’”’ as we unbelievers 
so heathenishly call it, is not death to them. Death 
does not come near them. You cannot put them 
into your open graves. Death does not even 
seriously suspend their studies. ‘“‘ To-day,’’ says 
the Wisdom of God to them, “‘ you shall be with Me 
where there is no more night : and where there is no 
darkness at all. To-day I shall, Myself, meet you, 
and introduce you to serve My Father day and night 
in His Temple of truth, and love, and all fulness 
of everlasting life.” What a wonderful world we 
are in, my brethren! And what a wonderful 
world awaits us! Especially, and supremely, all 
you who are men of a sanctified mind, and of the 
pursuits of a sanctified mind. For all your best 
books, all your best apparatus, all your best in- 
struments, all your suspended experiments on 
nature and on grace, all your hindered and all your 
interrupted enterprises, with all your gained and 
garnered knowledge,—when you awake, you will 
find it all waiting you there as the reward of your 
high industry and your noble diligence here. ‘‘ Well 
done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou on 


A WONDER IN HEAVEN 91 


new worlds of truth, and knowledge, and love 
never to be exhausted, and never to be arrested 
or defeated.” 

In our ignorance and irreverence, we charge God 
foolishly as often as a young theologian, or a young 
scholar, or a young preacher, or a young man of 
science, is summoned up out of our sight. But if 
Wwe were wise, and if we loved them, we would 
rejoice for their sake, even when we weep incon- 
solably for our own lifelong desolation. “ For 
the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it: 
and His servants shall serve Him. And they shall 
see His face, and His name shall be in their fore- 
heads. And they need no candle, neither light of 
the sun: for the Lord God giveth them light, and 
they shall reign for ever and ever.” 

When William Cowper died, there camie out upon 
his sad countenance a look of “holy surprise.”’ 
The very last poem Cowper had composed was about 
himself, and he had entitled it “ The Castaway.” 
But, instead of being what he thought he would 
for ever be, a look of “holy surprise’? came out 
of his heart, and spread over his dead face—so 
abundant was the entrance that was being at that 
moment administered to him. 

Come then, away, O downcast soul! Comeaway ! 
And William Cowper, and you, and I, will one 
day hold a three-cornered contest in heaven as to 
which of us three has the most wonderful story to 


92 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


tell, and the most wonderful song to sing. I think 
I know who will carry away the prize from you 
both. 

Nay, I am sure I know! ‘Of whom I am 
chiet,’’ 


PART II 
MERCY AND TRUTH ARE MET TOGETHER 





Vill 
THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 


A NEW YEAR MESSAGE 


‘‘ That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten ; 
and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten ; 
and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar 
eaten.’”’—JOEL i. 4. 

‘“*T will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.’’— 
JOEL ii. 25. 

Dr. Pussty, the most literal, orthodox, and con- 
servative of commentators, admits, in his great 
work on the Minor Prophets, that the prophet Joel 
opens his book with an enigma. The locust and 
the palmerworm and the caterpillar and the canker- 
worm, he is compelled to admit, are clearly some 
sort of sacred enigma. That extraordinarily 
learned and extraordinarily painstaking inter- 
preter absolutely ransacks all the books of natural 
history and of Eastern travel determined to find 
Joel’s literal locusts in some of those books. But 
without success. For, terrible as are the tales that 
travellers tell about the locust, harrowing as are 
the accounts they give of the doomed lands on 


which the locust descends—after all that, there are 
95 


96 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


some things in Joel still more terrible and still more 
harrowing. In his determination to find actual 
locusts, and nothing but actual locusts on the in- 
spired page, the aged and saintly scholar toils on 
till, at last, he is compelled to lay down his books 
both of science and of travel, and to confess that 
he is beaten. ‘‘ No,’ he says, “‘it is clear to me 
now that they are not literal locusts. Whatever 
they are they are not literal locusts. There is some- 
thing here, I see now, far worse than any locust. 
There is some dark riddle of human misery here 
that neither our learned naturalists nor our Eastern 
travellers know everything about. But I think 
I know now,” says the ripe old saint. “ Joel’s 
locusts, I see now and am sure, are not so far away 
as Arabia or Palestine. For all Joel’s locusts, in all 
their kinds and in all their devastations, are in my 
own heart. Why did I go beating about among 
blind and barren books when this prophet, all the 
time, was but describing the sinfulness of my own 
heart ?”’ Dr. Pusey went far wrong and he led 
his Church far wrong on some most essential 
matters, but he never went far wrong in his doctrines 
of sin and of holiness. And he was wholly right,— 
as wholly right as the Holy Ghost and a holy life 
could make him,—in his final and full explanation 
of this prophet’s terrible locusts. ‘“‘ Let my readers 
take my word for it,” he said. All this power and 
passion and repentance and remorse comes from a 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 97 


far deeper source than any plague of locusts. No! 
This is no locust. This is no deadly insect with 
shining wings. There is only one thing on the face 
of the whole earth that this can be. This 1s 
Sin! 

The first thing that aroused the great scholar’s 
suspicion that the prophet was setting a deep 
riddle to his readers was this terrible passage: 
““Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye in- 
habitants of the land. Tell your children of it, and 
let your children tell their children, and their 
children another generation. That which the 
palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and 
that which the locust hath left hath the canker- 
worm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath 
left hath the caterpillar eaten.’’ In all his immense 
apparatus of authors the old Hebrew Professor could 
find no breed of locust that ever came up, scourge 
after scourge, on any land, in that fashion. As far 
as he could read or hear, one descent of locusts is 
enough to make any land a desert. No. It clearly 
cannot be literal locusts. It is some deep riddle of 
desolation that the sorrowful prophet sets to us 
under the name of locusts. 

And no sooner had the saintly scholar tried the 
key of sin than the prophet’s sacred lock flew open ; 
and his deep riddle was as clear as day. Try that 
key yourselves, my brethren. You have a great 
scholar’s word for it that that key fits, to perfection, 

7 | 


98 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the most inward and intricate parts of Joel’s in- 
ward and intricate prophecy. Well,—try that 
same key upon yourselves. Try it on your own 
desolate life. Try it on desolation after desola- 
tion of your utterly desolate life. Try it year 
after year. Take sin after sin, sin after sin, 
and see if sinis not the true key of your desolate 
life. 

The old men are challenged by this bold prophet 
to testify to the truth of what he says, to give their 
children and their children’s children the benefit 
of their desolate and accumulated experience. 
Will you who are old men and wise do it? You 
are not great pulpit expositors like Gregory, nor 
great scholars like Pusey; but, by this time, you 
must be as wise and well-experienced as any ancient 
or modern of them all in the things that turn the 
garden of youth into the wilderness of old age. If 
you have learned anything to be called learning, 
you must have surely learned this—how one sin 
succeeds another till you are what you are to-day. 
You could name to your children—as Joel challenged 
the old men of his day to name to their children— 
you could name your locust-sins in their genea- 
logical order, in their successive descents, and in 
their complete desolation. Name them then, first 
to yourselves and then to your children; and it 
will be your salvation and theirs. 

But all this time, locusts, let us be thankful, do 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 99 


not descend on our land like that. Our cold, hard, 
dark, uncongenial climate has its compensations. 
If our fields are not so full of milk and honey, and 
wine and oil, as the Land of Judah is, neither have 
we those terrible scourges that the prophet here 
handles with such terrible power. It is only the 
richest and sunniest lands that breed locusts; and 
it is not your dark, cold, hard, uncongenial hearts 
that suffer from an inward sinfulness that makes 
life to some men such a wilderness. Some men 
will not understand this, and will not haveit. But 
there are other men to whom this will read as the 
most literal, and so to say, scientific truth,—this 
out of this prophet’s so marvellously constructed 
riddle. ‘“‘The land is as the Garden of Eden 
before them, and behind them a desolate wilder- 
ness: yea, and nothing shall escape them. Before 
their face the people shall be much pained and 
all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run 
like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like 
men of war; and they shall march every one on his 
ways, and they shall not break their ranks. They 
shall run to and fro in the city ; they shall run upon 
the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; 
they shall enter in at the windows like a thief, 
And, because of them, is not our meat cut off before 
our eyes? Yea, is not joy and gladness cut off 
from the house of our God? The seed is rotten 
under the clod because of them. The garner is 


100 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


desolate. And the barns are broken down.”’ Oh! 
it is so true! So true, and so masterly! It is so 
true and so masterly that for the moment we forget 
our anguish in our sheer intellectual delight in it. 
That is prophecy! That is preaching! And there 
is a certain noble if bitter pleasure in seeing our- 
selves and our great enemy so divinely discovered, 
understood, and described. With such truth and 
power and passion and splendid eloquence is the 
multitudinousness, and the veracity, and the 
prolificness, and the ineradicableness of our sin- 
fulness set forth in this prophet’s tremendous 
pages. 

But the word of the Lord came again to Joel 
the son of Pethuel. ‘‘ Therefore, thus saith the 
Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and 
with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. 
And rend your heart, and not your garments, and 
turn unto the Lord. For He is gracious and merci- 
ful, and repenteth Him of the evil.’”’ ‘“ Rend your 
heart !’’ prophesied the son of Pethuel with all his 
power. ‘“‘ And so we shall,” replied the old men of 
his day. “So we shall: and so we have already 
done!’’ said many of the inhabitants of the locust- 
cursed land. “Ifa ‘rent heart’ is to be the arrest 
of God’s judgments, and the return of His mercies, 
then let Him look and see if our hearts are not truly 
rent,’’ witnessed the worshippers in Zion. ‘“‘ Let 
Him search us and try us,” they said, ‘‘ if our hearts 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 101 


are not enough rent. Rend our hearts, O Lord!”’ 
They proclaimed a fast and prayed. And so you 
do also, who are old men and wise men, and elders 
in Zion. “If we know ourselves,” you say, “ our 
hearts are indeed rent before God. We have nothing 
to offer to God or man out of the fields of our past 
lives, but a rent heart. That is the only redress or 
reparation and recompense we can offer to God or 
man. Blessed be God that a rent heart is His best 
harvest !’”’ you exclaim. 

“Who knoweth ?’’ wonders the prophet—‘“* who 
knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave 
a blessing behind Him?” And that both His 
prophet and His people might know, and might not 
be left in any doubt, the word of the Lord came 
again: “‘ Fear not: but be glad and rejoice; for 
the Lord will do great things. I will do even this 
great thing, saith the Lord. I will restore to you 
the years that the locust hath eaten.’”’ Now, all 
parable apart, and in all plainness of speech, can 
any one tell us in what way the God of Israel, and 
our own God, does that ? Set the locusts aside for a 
little, and tell us in plain words that we can under- 
stand and remember, just how our past years can 
be recovered and restored : or, if that is impossible, 
then just what God can do and will do for us, if 
our heart is rent and laid at His feet. 

Well, for one thing :—Joel and his old men had 
reaped the fruit of a “‘ rent heart.’ A harvest that 


102 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


we have reaped also—have we not, my brethren ? 
Our hearts, like Joel’s, have a rent in them so deep, 
so wide, so ragged, that nothing in this world, 
not all the milk and wine and honey of this world, 
will ever heal it. We have brought a heart out of 
our past years that no future years on earth can 
ever again make what it once was. We would not 
have it again what it once was, even if we could. 
For our heart is now rent loose from earth at its 
best, and gone on beforehand to heaven. It will 
not be healed and made whole and satisfied short 
of ‘‘ His likeness.’’ What fruit? Well,—a “rent 
heart’ to begin with: and with a “rent heart,” 
a humbled heart, a heart full of humility, and self- 
abasement, and self-abhorrence, and self-abandon- 
ment. And a mind to dwell beside such a heart, 
and to minister to it. Even a spiritual and a 
heavenly mind. A mind and a heart for spiritual 
things: that is to say, for the things of God in 
nature, and in His word, and in Jesus Christ, and 
in grace, and in glory. A heart and a mind for the 
Cross of Christ, and for the throne of grace, and for 
the hopes and the foretastes of everlasting life. But 
Paul answers his own questions best. For these are 
his own noble words—that “‘ godly sorrow for the 
past worketh repentance for the future not to be 
repented of. For, behold, this selfsame thing, 
what carefulness it wrought in you! Yea, what 
clearing of yourselves. Yea, what indignation; 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 103 


yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire. Yea, 
what zeal; yea, what revenge.”’ Or, take it in 
Andrewes’s fine paraphrase: “ Turn, O Lord, my 
mourning into dancing : my dreaming into earnest- 
ness: my many falls into so many clearings of 
myself: my guilt into indignation: my sin into 
fear: my transgression into vehement desire: my 
unrighteousness into zeal: and my pollution into 
revenge.” Or, again, let Fenelon reply to Paul. 
“I downright rejoice in your desolation,”’ he writes 
to a noble lady correspondent. ‘‘ For God will 
teach you how to kill self out of your heart through 
disgust at this world, and through the desolation 
of your own life. As to grave faults of your past 
life they will turn to your certain good in the future 
if you make use of them for your humiliation. 
The true way to profit out of an evil past is to face 
it in all its hideousness, hoping for nothing better 
from ourselves in the time to come: while, at the 
same time, we do not cease to hope in God. And 
when He has stripped us bare of all strength and 
hope and self-resource, He will then begin to graft 
us on upon His Son Jesus Christ.’”’ That, in the 
plainest possible words, is some of the fruit we have 
ever with us, out of those years of which we are 
now ashamed. Those are some of the ways in 
which God restores to His people the years that the 
cankerworm hath eaten. 

It has been the want of faith, my brethren, that 


104 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


has been at the root of all the blight and barrenness 
of our past years. And if God is to make His 
promise in the text good to you and me for this 
New Year, and for all our own future years, it will 
be by strengthening and fertilising our faith! When 
the root is weak or diseased, or when it has no 
deepness of earth, then any passing locust will soon 
kill the tree. But when the root is sound and 
strong and deep-seated and well-watered, the tree 
will blossom and bear fruit and will survive all the 
locusts that you can send up against it. Let us 
have faith, then, my brethren. Let us have, 
and in all things let us exercise, faith in God. Let 
us believe that He is, as we have never up to this 
year believed. Let us believe His Word. Let us 
read and meditate on His Word in a way we have 
never yet done. Our spiritual life and its fruitful- 
ness comes and goes just as we read God’s Word, 
and meditate on it in secret. Let us read, then, and 
meditate, read and pray, till His word dwells in 
us richly. And then, faith and all its fruits will 
grow in us, as they have always grown in those who 
had the true root within them, and who watered 
it with the water of life that flows in the channels 
of God’s Word. And then, with the life of faith 
growing in that way in us—what new creatures we 
shall soon become! What new eyes will begin to 
open in our hearts! And what a new world on 
earth and in heaven our new eyes will begin to see ! 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 105 


And what years, even on earth, we shall yet have, 
as faith puts forth in us her perfect fruit! Believe! 
Believe! Have faith! Have faith!—our Lord 
went about continually pleading with men. And 
when He found faith in Jew or Gentile how 
proud He was of it! What liberty and _ bold- 
ness He allowed it! And what rewards He put 
upon it! 

And with a faith like that for the root of our 
future life, a holy love will henceforth be the sap, 
and the strength, and the fatness of our redeemed 
and remaining years. O, if God would but shed 
abroad His love in our hearts, we should soon forget 
all the famine and desolation of our past years! 
And He will! He says that He will, and we believe 
Him. Do we not, do you not, in these days feel 
something begun and going on within you as if a new 
beginning of faith and love was come to you? Do 
you not feel something, not unlike the breath of a 
spiritual spring, beginning to blow over your long 
desolation? Ido. Do you not? O, let us all set 
open our hearts to the Spirit of God, and the buds 
will soon begin to burst and the birds will soon begin 
to build and to sing. Open your hearts to God, 
my brethren! Do not be afraid of God. Do not 
turn away from God. Where are you going? To 
whom can you go if you go away from God? God 
is love. If God is anything, He is love. God is 
also light in darkness, and warmth in winter, and 


106 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


companionship and communion in desertion and 
loneliness, and goodness, and truth, and beauty, 
and sweetness, and more than mortal tongue can 
tell. It is well worth being the chief of sinners to 
have such a Saviour. It is well worth having all 
our years within us eaten up of locusts to have a 
message sent us like this message that God has 
sent us all this morning. And this message, as 
the Lord liveth, is no lie, but is the simple truth. 
Itis no dream. Itisnodelusion. It is the surest, 
solidest, most matter-of-fact, most verifiable, most 
experimental, most immediate, most urgent, and 
most everlasting of all truths. Heaven and earth 
shall pass away. You will be present and will see 
and feel them passing away—but this message 
of this morning shall not pass till it is all fulfilled. 
Rend your hearts, and who knoweth what He will 
do? Turn to the Lord and see. Gather up your 
lost life, and lay it down at His feet, and see. Say 
to Him that you have destroyed yourself, and see. 
Say to Him that all your hope is in His Word, and 
see. And then, tell ye your children what He 
hath done for your soul, and let your children 
tell their children, and their children to another 
generation. 

Be ye glad, then, ye children of Zion; and re- 
joice in the Lord your God. For I will restore to 
you the years that the locust hath eaten, and the 
cankerworm, and the caterpillar and the palmer- 


THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST 107 


worm. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, 
and praise the name of the Lord your God that 
hath dealt so wondrously with you. And ye shall 
know that I am in the midst of my people Israel: 
and My people shall never be ashamed. 


IX 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 


“What think ye of Christ ? ’?—MatT. xxii. 42. 


What think ye of Christ ? That is the question of 
all questions. No other question so important and 
so pressing as that question has ever been put to 
the mind, and to the heart, and to the conscience of 
man. There is no other possible question that so 
taxes and so tests the whole soul of every man 
as just this question,—what he thinks of Christ. 
This question is “‘ quick, and powerful, and sharper 
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the 
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts 
and intents’ of every human heart. What, then, 
think ye of Christ ? 

I. But to begin with,—and by far the most 
important question of all,—what does God think of 
Christ ? Well, the whole Bible is full of little else 
but of what God thinks of Christ. As thus: 
“ Behold, My Servant, Whom I uphold: Mine 
elect, in Whom My soul delighteth. A bruised reed 
shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 109 


not quench. Therefore will I divide Him a portion 
with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with 
the strong.”’ 

And then, when Christ actually came, and when 
He was being baptized into His work, lo, a voice 
from heaven, saying, “ This is My Beloved Son in 
Whom I am well pleased.’’ And when His great 
work was for ever finished, we have this: ‘‘ Where- 
fore God hath highly exalted Him, and hath given 
Him a Name which is above every name, that at the 
Name of Jesus every knee should bow.’’ Such are 
some samples of God’s thoughts and declarations 
concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

2. And then, next in importance to what God 
thinks of Christ, what does Christ think of Himself ? 
My brethren,—what a mystery the young Christ 
must have been for long years to Himself! I 
suppose ‘‘ He began to be about thirty years of 
age,’ before He was at all able to satisfy Himself 
as to Who and What He actually was. The Holy 
Child Jesus must have made the discovery early in 
His life that He was like no other child in all Israel. 
‘All seek their own,’ says Holy Scripture, in 
condemnation of all the children of men. But the 
Child Jesus must have seen and felt within Himself, 
with a holy wonder, and a holy joy, that, while all 
around Him, young and old, were all seeking their 
own things, far deeper in His heart than His own 
things were the things of God, and the things of 


110 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


His neighbour. So early was this the case with 
Him that, at twelve years of age, He was able to 
say to His mother,—‘‘ How is it that ye sought 
Me? Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s 
business?’ And then, after another eighteen 
years’ incessant observation, examination, and study 
of Himself, with much searching of the Scriptures, 
and with much prayer, He was enabled to come forth 
from His obscurity, and to announce Himself and to 
offer Himself to Israel, as her promised Messiah, 
and to all men as their promised Redeemer. 

3. Now, after all that, what an additional study 
and what a splendid study it would make to go on 
to ask and to answer what the Apostle John thought 
of Christ,— John, who lay in his Master’s bosom, and 
enjoyed His Master’s special confidence and His 
special love. And what Peter ultimately thought 
of Him Whom at one time he had denied with 
oaths and curses. And what Judas Iscariot thought 
of his Master all along—and at the end. It 
would throw a flood of light, both upon the traitor 
himself, and upon his whole time, if we could only 
get at his real thoughts about Christ. But above 
all—what Paul thought, Paul in whom “God 
revealed His Son,” as never before, nor since. And 
then, what the Greek and Latin Fathers—those 
so deep and so clear thinkers—thought, in their 
day, of Christ. And then, the Reformers—Luther 
and Calvin and Knox, and all that profound and 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 111 


spiritual school—what they thought of the greatest 
subject of thought to men and angels. And then, 
what the English Puritans taught the English 
people and the American people to think of Christ. 
And then, our own Scottish forefathers, with the 
enthralled and enraptured Rutherford at their 
head,—what they all thought and spoke to their 
people concerning Christ. To tell all that in detail 
would be of the first interest and the first import- 
ance. But after all, this would remain the real 
question—What think we of Christ? You sitting 
there and I standing here. 

4. Now, in this congregation as in every con- 
gregation, there must be various ranks and classes 
of people who divide themselves out before God 
just according as they think of Christ. For, “‘asa 
man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’’ Our Lord 
once said of Himself that His coming among men 
had brought not peace, but a sword. And not a 
sword only, but a broad and a deep dividing line 
also: many dividing lines indeed, many clefts 
indeed, and chasms even: many all-but-impass- 
able gulfs, already open between man and man 
among us, according as we think of Christ. One 
sad, and not small class among us, is composed of 
those men and women who simply never think of 
Christ at all. They are exactly like John Bunyan: 
they never think, in church or market, whether 
there is a Christ or no. 


112 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


But happily, there is another class of men and 
women among us who are the exact opposite of 
that. They are but a small class, it is to be feared, 
in any congregation, and yet, who can tell ?— 
they may be more in number than any one would 
believe. Few or many,—this noble class is com- 
posed of those men and women among us who in 
their heart of hearts are continually thinking of 
Christ. ‘‘To me to live is Christ,’ says Paul. 
“What things were gain to me, those I counted 
loss for Christ,’”” he says again. “‘ Christ Jesus,” 
he says in another place, “is made of God to me 
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
redemption.’” And soon: through all his Epistles, 
so full of Christ, and of nothing else but Christ. 
Now, they cannot be a great crowd in any congrega- 
tion or community, who say such things as these 
concerning Christ. But there are such men and 
women among us: “one of a city and two of a 
family,” as the prophet says. Yes,—we will 
believe it: there are truly Christian men and 
women among us, and more than you would easily 
believe, who say to Christ with all their heart every 
returning morning,—‘‘ When I awake I am still 
with Thee!” 


“Dark and cheerless is the morn 
Unaccompanied by Thee. 
Joyless is the day’s return 
Till Thy mercy’s beams I see,” 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 113 


But, with all their happy experiences of Christ, 
even the best of believers too much forget to think 
of Him, when they are suddenly surprised with 
some unforeseen temptation, or heavy trial, or 
sharp cross, or sore hurt, or great loss. But the 
root of the matter is in them all the time. And 
they soon recover their feet, and say to Christ: 
‘“Whom have I, and whom need I, but Thee alone? ”’ 
The very best of believers will have seasons of 
the most terrible depression, and desolation, and 
despair. But the sun shines out, and they are 
themselves again. That is to say,—Christ is Him- 
self to them again. Ups and downs like these go 
on with the best of believers, all through their life 
on earth. Till “‘ the souls of all true believers are 
at their death made perfect in holiness, and do 
immediately pass into glory.” That is to say, 
into the glory of Christ: according to His all- 
prevailing prayer in their behalf,—‘‘ Father, I will 
that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with 
Me where I am.” 

And then, besides those among us who never 
think of Christ at all, and those who think of little 
else, there is a large, intermediate class, to whom 
this great matter may be put in some such way as 
this. Let me put it to you in this way, this morn- 
ing :—Suppose it were discovered to you that there 
is no Christ, that there has never been a Christ, 
and never will be, and that the whole thing is a 


114 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


delusion. Suppose that you were able to send 
out trusty spies, to search both earth and heaven, 
to their utmost borders. And suppose your spies 
came back and reported to you that they had done 
what you instructed them to do: that they had 
explored the whole universe, in the height and in 
the depth, and had found no Christ, nor any one 
at all to answer in any respect to the New Testa- 
ment description of Christ—What would you think ? 
What would you say? What would you do? 
Would that report be a great relief to you? Would 
you breathe far more freely after that? What 
would you give to your spies for their reward ? 
And how would you find words to thank them ? 
Would you tell them what an unspeakable service 
they had done you? Would you confess to them 
how unhappy the thought of ever having to meet 
with Christ face to face had always made you ? 
Would you shake hands with them, and say: Come 
and dine with me: come and let us eat meat and 
drink wine and be merry, since there is no Christ, 
and no judgment seat of Christ, and no book to be 
opened, and no account to be given to Him of the 
deeds we have done in our body? Is anything 
like that your true state of mind concerning Christ ? 
Or, on the other hand—would you say to the spies 
who reported that there is no Christ, that they had 
made you, of all men, most miserable? Would 
your first words be to curse the day on which you 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 115 


were born? Would your face, from that day, 
more and more gather blackness? Would you be 
like Elijah, who went a day’s journey into the 
wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper 
tree and requested for himself that he might now 
die, and said, “It is enough: now, O God, take 
away my life’’ ? 

By putting the thing to ourselves in some such 
ways as these, we are better able to read the deepest 
and secretest thoughts of our hearts about Christ, 
and about ourselves. And indeed, any device is 
admissible, and is wise, that arouses us to think at 
all about Christ, and whether there is a Christ, or no. 

But, whatever your spies say to you about 
Christ :—whether they bring back a false report like 
the ten, or a true report like Caleb and Joshua; 
whether they tell you their abominable lies about 
Christ, or tell you the divine truth about Him,—be 
that as it may; at any rate, no man can tell you 
lies about yourself. You know yourself better 
than any other man can possibly know you. What, 
then, do you think and say of yourself? That is, 
_ to you, the first and foremost of all questions. 
That comes even before what you think of Christ. 
For it is what you think of yourself that will always 
decide what you think of Him. Tell me what you 
think of yourself, and I will undertake to tell you 
what and how much you think of Christ. Just as, 
tell me what and how much and how often you 


116 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


think of Christ, and I will already know to a 
certainty what you think of yourself. The plain 
truth is,—no one but a convinced sinner can think 
one right thought about Jesus Christ. And more 
than that, the greater the sinner, the greater and 
the truer will his thoughts be about his Saviour. 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is ten thousand things 
to God, and man, and angel: ten thousand things 
on earth and in heaven, in time and in eternity, 
in grace and in glory; but, first and foremost, to 
you and to me this morning, He is our Saviour from 
our sins. Select real sinners, then, for your spies, 
if you would have a true report concerning Christ, 
and whether there is a Christ or no. Select, and 
send, the very chief of sinners, if you would have 
the whole truth told you about Christ. Ask them 
to search and to report to you, and say to them 
when they return: “‘Saw ye Him whom my soul 
loveth ?’’ And they will tell you that they found 
both heaven and earth as full as they can hold of 
Christ and of no one else but Christ. And that He 
sent this message by them to you—‘*‘ Come unto 
Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden. And 
him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” 
And then, when you go to Him, and are not cast 
out, come back and tell us about Him: tell us 
what you found Him to be, and what you now think 
of Him. And then, after that, you shall always be 
our spies; you shall always be our Caleb and our 


a tee ee 


= 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 117 


Joshua; and we will reward you, and your children, 
with a south land, and with springs of water, 
because you brought us a true and an encouraging 
and a cheering report concerning Christ, your 
Saviour and ours. 

Now, in closing, let us go over and tell to our- 
selves, and to one another, some of the things that 
have helped us most to our best thoughts concerning 
Christ. There are so many things in this world 
that work the other way ; there are so many things 
that cause us to forget Christ, that it is wise and 
good to go over, and keep well in mind, the things 
that have best assisted us in our best thoughts 
concerning Christ. Well, then, what is it in Christ 
that you most admire? What is it in Him that 
most moves your heart? What is it in Him that 
makes your heart to sing within you and to say: 
“Thou art fairer than the children of men”? To 
what incident in His recorded life on earth do you 
like best to return? What miracle of His do you 
always ask to be repeated in you? What mighty 
work of His do you pray importunately to have 
worked over again in your son or in your daughter ? 
What sermon of His do you oftenest return to 
hear? What parable of His do you esteem to be 
His gem and His masterpiece ? What secret prayer 
of yours has He so openly and so wonderfully 
answered ? What blessing do you possess at this 
moment that you got from Him when you asked Him 


118 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


for it? Or, perhaps, you got it before you had 
even so much as asked Him for it! By what name 
of His do you oftenest call upon Him in prayer or 
in praise? Do you say 
‘* Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend, 
My Prophet, Priest, and King, 
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, 
Accept the praise I bring” ? 
What name of His will be most legibly written on 
your forehead in heaven, to be read there by saints 
and angels ? 

“Can you tell us,’’ said Prudence, ‘‘ by what 
means you find your thoughts most turned to 
Christ ?”’ 

“* Yes,’’ Christian said: ‘‘ when I think what I saw 
at the Cross, that will doit. And when I look on my 
broidered coat, that will do it. Also, when I look 
into the Roll that I carry in my bosom, that will 
do it. And when my heart waxes warm about 
whither I am going, that will do it.” 

‘“‘And what is it that makes you so desirous to 
go to Mount Zion ? ”’ she went on to ask. 

‘““Why, there I hope to see Him alive that did 
hang dead upon the Cross for me. And there I 
hope to be rid of all those things that are to this 
day such a grief and such a snare to me. And 
there I shall dwell with the company I like best. 
For, to tell you the truth, I love Him because I 
was by Him relieved of my burden, and I am weary 


WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 119 


of this inward sickness of mine. And I would fain 
be where I shall sin no more, and with that com- 
pany that shall continually cry: Holy! Holy! 
Holy !” 

“When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea 
Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do 
men say that I, the Son of Man, am? ... Some 
say that Thou art John the Baptist; some Elias ; 
and others, Jeremias or one of the prophets. ... 
But whom say ye that Iam? And Simon Peter 
answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God. 

“‘And Jesus answered and said unto him: Blessed 
art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath 
not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is 
in heaven.” 


xX 
THE CORN OF WHEAT 


“ , . Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that 
the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, 1 say unto 
you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. . . .’— 
JOHN Xii. 20-33. 


THE Greek people, if so be they were our Greeks, 
had gifts given them by God above all people that 
ever dwelt on the face of the earth. Above all other 
people they had the seeing eye, and the hearing 
ear, the love of all beauty, and the desire after all 
wisdom. Art, song, eloquence, letters, philosophy : 
what had the Greek people not? Let our Lord 
and His great Apostles answer. They had not 
salvation: ‘‘ Salvation is of the Jews,’’ said our 
Lord. With all their wisdom, they knew not God, 
said the Apostle writing to the Corinthians. That 
is to say, they knew not the law of God: they knew 
not sin; and therefore they knew not salvation. 
And thus it is that we find in the text certain Greeks 
who have come up to worship at Jerusalem, and 
to take part in its Passover. ‘‘ The same came 


120 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 121 


therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of 
Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see 
Jesus.’”’ A good errand and a welcome desire: 
only they had formed it and uttered it just a little 
too soon. For our Lord is still fulfilling, indeed, He 
is just finishing, the great mission on which He had 
been sent to “ the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’’ 
Had those Greeks waited, and come to Philip, say, 
six weeks after this—they would not indeed have 
“seen Jesus,” but they would have heard, every 
man in his own tongue, the wonderful works of 
God. They would have found Peter preaching to 
this effect: “‘ Repent, and be baptized every one 
of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission 
of sins. For the promise is unto you, and to your 
children, and to all that are afar off, even as many 
as the Lord our God shall call.” 

But as it was, their visit to Philip and their 
message to Philip’s Master were just a little pre- 
mature. All things, though fast getting ready, 
were scarcely ready as yet. The middle wall of 
partition was not yet quite broken down. Those 
that were far off were not just yet to be made nigh. 
The enmity was not yet slain. The reconciliation 
of both Jew and Greek into one body was not yet 
fully accomplished. The One Spirit had not yet 
given both access unto the Father. In one word, 
Jesus Christ had not yet been crucified ; much 
less glorified. And thus it is that we owe the 


122 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


priceless passage before us to this somewhat 
abrupt and premature petition of certain Greeks 
to see our Lord. 

It is a proverb among us that though death 
may have been long looked for, yet, when it actually 
comes, it always comes suddenly. Death takes the 
best prepared of men by surprise. And this too 
sudden message from those Greek proselytes took 
our Lord by surprise; for it brought Him too 
sharply, and too suddenly, face to face with His 
Cross. He had long been ready for it ; He had long 
been labouring to make His disciples ready for it; 
but when the full fruits’ of it were thus suddenly 
demanded of Him, He reeled under the blow, and 
took some time to recover Himself. He felt that 
the cup was, at that moment, too suddenly thrust 
into His hand; and the Cross too suddenly laid 
upon His shoulders. “‘ The hour is come then,” 
He said, more to Himself than to any one else. 
And during that “ hour,’’ between the beginning of 
it and the end of it, He knew that He had to finish 
a work the bare thought of which at that moment 
threw Him back upon all the faith, all the filial 
obedience, all the strength and all the resolution 
that even He could command. He had been wont 
to set forth some of the things of the Kingdom of 
Heaven to His disciples in parables; and, at that 
weak and over-weighted moment, He took up this 
powerful parable and laid it on His own heart to 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 123 


calm and subdue and strengthen it. It was far 
more to commit and confirm Himself at that heart- 
sinking moment than to instruct or console His 
disciples that He said in their hearing and presence : 
—‘ Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit.” 

Just suppose it,—they sometimes expected it: 
well, just suppose it,—that our Lord had in anger 
and in judgment turned His back on rebellious 
Israel and had gone to the dispersed among the 
Gentiles. He might have been an accepted and 
an honoured teacher come from God among them ; 
and He would thus have escaped the cross, and 
perhaps the hemlock cup also, and gone down to 
His grave in an honoured old age. Suppose that, 
I say: do violence to your feelings and your faith 
so far as for one moment to suppose that: the 
painful supposition, I do not say possibility, is 
involved in His own parable; then, in that case, 
He would have been the corn of wheat which abides 
alone. Had He done this, then in His own words— 
in loving His life He would have lost it. For He 
had not come to this world to live in this world, 
but to dieinit andforit. Hehadcome to Jerusalem 
and was now waiting in it to be offered up; and 
had He now flinched and fled—forgive the im- 
possible thought—it is His own—that had been a 
fail of man worse far than the fall of fifty Adams. 


124 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Let His redeemed pardon the impossible and 
dreadful dream; and let them boast themselves 
in their faithful and merciful Saviour, and say that 
it was by renouncing the offered office of a Greek 
sage at the end that He became the glorified 
Redeemer He now is: just as it was by refusing 
the offered throne of Solomon at the beginning that 
He now sits at the right hand of the throne of God. 

But what is true of the parent seed that lies dead 
and buried in the fruitful furrow, that is true also, 
in its turn, of the full corn that is fast ripening in 
the autumn ear. Every single corn of springing 
wheat has the same sacrificial future standing before 
it. As soon as it becomes a ripe corn of wheat, this 
same parable is immediately prophesied over it. 
And not of wheat only ; but much more of men is 
this parable true. For unto men, and among 
men, this is the interpretation and application of 
the parable. ‘“‘ He that loveth His life shall lose 
it: while he that hateth his life in this world shall 
keep it unto life eternal.’’ Look around you, my 
brethren, nay, look within you and see if Jesus 
Christ is not in all this a true prophet. He, among 
us, who dies to his own life, he alone truly lives. 
He who lives and dies for others; he who works 
with his hands that he may have to give to him 
who needeth ; he who stints his too-full table that 
he may deal his bread to the hungry; and gives 
up his own will and wish and way for peace and love 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 125 


and righteousness’ sake—what is his reward? A 
prophet shall answer to him: ‘“ The Lord shall 
guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in 
drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt 
be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water 
whose waters fail not.”’ And still more true is it 
that he who loveth his own life shall lose it—for he 
has already lost it: he is already dead. He who 
spares himself and lives for himself; he who shuts 
up his hand and his heart from God and his neigh- 
bours—that man is already dead. He may be 
hoarding, or he may be feasting, as his humour is, 
—as the nature of his corruption is,—but he is 
already dead. They are dead unto God,—-as many 
as live unto themselves. ‘“ Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, Except acorn of wheat fallinto the ground 
and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth 
forth much fruit.” Saw you ever a stalk of corn 
standing anywhere with its heavy head of edible 
gold? You did not need to dig up its hidden root 
in order to be sure that it had sprung up at first, 
and had been daily nourished out of the burst 
bosom and broken heart of a parent seed. When 
you next enter a wide harvest-field filled with re- 
joicing reapers, walk softly over it, for buried and 
forgotten beneath your feet there lies a great 
graveyard of parental seed. Buried around 
Bannockburn and Bothwell-brig lies the seed-corn 
of Scotland’s civil and religious liberties. Is this 


126 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


a free New Testament Church? and is she the 
mother and sister of many such? Then, forget 
not, that she too purchased her own freedom and 
theirs at the great price set forth in the text: the 
price of forgotten generations of martyrs and 
confessors and outcast Fathers who counted not 
their lives dear to them, of whom the world was 
not worthy. The glorified Church herself will have 
this parable graven on her foundation-stone: this 
scripture in gold around a cross in blood will be 
her legend and her mystery in the eyes of all her 
blood-redeemed and _ sorrow-sanctified members. 
‘He that loveth his life shall lose it, but he that 
hateth his life shall keep it.’”’ Do I read aright ? 
“He that hateth his life.’’ Did our Lord indeed 
say that? Did John understand his Master aright 
when he so reported Him? Or is this still the 
language of parable and paradox? No, my 
brethren, this is not in the parable at all: this is 
in the interpretation. Our Lord is here speaking 
plainly. Plainly, literally, prosaically: putting 
the right word, and the only right word, upon the 
thing. Yes, there is no doubt of it. Our Lord 
certainly said, ““ He that hateth his life.”’ Now, 
do not be frightened or offended at this noble 
doctrine of deep hatred preached by Christ and 
practised to the letter by all His disciples. Do not 
be alarmed at their morose and misanthropical 
neighbourhood. Do not be too horrified at them: 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 127 


do not flee from them as if they were monsters, 
They will not bite you. They will not hurt a hair 
of your head. They will not even sit and speak 
against you. Not one ray of your reputation will 
be dimmed by them. Read the text again, “ He 
that hateth his life,” andsoon. It is not his neigh- 
bour he hates: it is not his enemy: it is not even 
his more talented or more successful friend: it is 
himself,—himself and his own sinful life. He has 
no hatred left for you; it is all poured out, poured 
in and expended on himself. Yes, my brethren, 
refine and distil till you get at the uttermost essence 
and the innermost affection of a man of God, true 
and safe for eternal life, and you will find that 
our Lord is not very far wrong when He says that 
the disciple who is likest his Master both in holy 
affections and in sacrificial fruits has his affections 
saturated, and their roots strengthened by the 
healing salt of true self-hatred. Away then with 
all your milk-and-water solutions and tame in- 
terpretations here! Take them to those who do 
not need and do not seek for and hunt for eternal 
life. Christ spoke to men and not to children, to 
manly saints and not eunuch-like sinners when He 
said, ‘‘ He that hateth his life’! The author of! 
The Crook in the Lot thus sums up his fifty-four. 
years’ experience of this hateful life: ‘“‘ Man is born | 
crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed. 
All is vanity and vexation of spirit. But I have 


128 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


waited for Thy salvation, O Lord.” Wait so: wait 
with Him and you shall not be confounded and put 
to shame. For our Lord’s interpretation of this 
parable thus concludes: “If any man serve Me, 
let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also 
My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will My 
Father honour.’ But, the marvellous narrative 
proceeds—‘‘ Now is My soul troubled.”’ 

‘““Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect ” that He 
should so speak? “‘ The only Redeemer of God’s 
elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, Who, being the 
eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and 
continueth to be, God and man in two distinct 
natures, and one Person for ever.’ Yes: ‘*‘ Two 
natures’’: “‘two distinct natures.’’ Here in our 
text is one of the very best proofs of it. Our Lord, 
our Redeemer, was and is the Eternal Son of God, 
“the same in substance, equal in power and 
glory.’ But He ‘‘ became man”; and He was 
and is as truly man as if He had not been God. 
Man, ‘‘ made of a woman.” Man, by “ taking to 
Himself a true body and a reasonable soul.’”? And 
it is of that “‘ reasonable soul’’ He speaks in the 
twenty-seventh verse: ‘‘ Now is My soul troubled.” 
Why, my brethren, here is a soul just like yours 
and mine! A soul troubled. A soul lifted up to 
heaven one moment, and cast down to the grave’s 
mouth the next moment. Its Possessor preaching 
eternal life and glorification through the Cross with 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 129 


one breath—-and with the next pouring out His soul 
in sighs and sobs, in prayers and supplications. 
After this do not upbraid your ministers too bitterly 
with the glaring inconsistency between their 
preaching and their practice. The disciple is not 
expected to be greater or better than his Master. 
Ah, my brethren, even to Jesus Christ, preaching 
was one thing and practice another. Rapture of 
soul in contemplation of heavenly truth and eternal 
life is one thing ; and the upward path of the Cross 
is another. Those premature and_ obtrusive 
Greeks again smote against our Lord’s heavy heart. 
For the moment He had almost forgotten their 
presence and their errand. For the moment He 
had been out of the body. But here again He 
sinks back into the body till He feels the thick 
darkness closing around it, and the nails and the 
spear crashing through it. The cup still stands 
before Him with the undrunk curse filling it. And 
again His “‘true body and His reasonable soul,’ 
His affectionate and passionate soul, shrank and 
trembled and were troubled. 

It is out of instances like this that the Apostle 
generalises the heart-comforting character he 
gives to Christ as our great High Priest. “‘ He was 
in all points tempted like as we are.”’ For after 
all our earlier temptations have fallen off us, after 
our first fierce passions are all burnt to dross and 
dust under our feet, a new and more deadly access 

9 


130 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of temptations assails us: temptations to re- 
bellion and bitterness against God and man, tempta- 
tions to disappointment and disaffection, to envy 
and ill-will, to gloom and repining of soul, a settled 
stubbornness to accept and do and go through with 
the holy will of God. ‘‘ Now is our soul troubled ”’ 
at poverty; now at bereavement; now at bodily 
infirmity ; now at some thorn in our flesh, or some 
crook in our lot ; now at approaching age, and now 
at near and inevitable death. But then, so was 
our Lord. ‘“ Yet,’ blessed be His name, “ with- 
out sin.”’ Let all the afflicted people of God take 
this true comfort that it is only human nature to 
be troubled in soul under the pressure of tempta- 
tion and affliction. And that it only becomes sin 
when affliction is nursed and brooded over and held 
close to an unbroken heart. Soul trouble only 
becomes sinful when prayer is restrained or for- 
saken; when the promises are treated lightly or 
set aside ; and when the example and the grace of 
Christ are wilfully passed by and forgotten. Let 
it never be passed by or for one moment forgotten 
by any troubled soul that our Saviour was not and 
is not an oak or arock, but was and is a Man of like 
passions and like affections with ourselves. And, 
best of all, He has not to this day forgotten what 
He came through in the days of His soul trouble: 


** He still remembers in the skies 
His tears, His agonies, and cries,’ 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 131 


d 


And thus “ His perturbations,’ as Augustine says, 
“were for our tranquillity ; and His infirmity for 
our fortification.” 

“Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I 
say?’’ I do not know what to say to express 
my thankfulness that this great Scripture has been 
preserved to us. I look on this as one of the most 
precious passages in all the afflicted man’s Bible. 
** What shall I say ? ’”’ cries out our Lord’s staggered 
heart. He isina sore strait. Duty is behind Him 
impelling Him on, while the Cross is before Him, 
terrifying Him back. God’s law is in His heart ; 
but the floods of fear and the horror of the death 
awaiting Him almost blot it out. What shall I 
say? He groans. Ah! Death! Death! Thou 
art indeed our last enemy! Thou puttest Stand- 
fast himself into a muse when thou presentest thy 
challenge! O my soul! after thou hast preached 
the resurrection of the dead for a lifetime, and 
comforted many sick-beds, and rebuked all un- 
ready and unwilling saints—how wilt thou thyself 
do in the swelling of Jordan? What wilt thou say 
when ¢hy near death troubles thee? Surely this :— 
“Father, glorify Thy name!” ‘“ Now is My soul 
troubled; and what shallI say? Father, save Me 
from this hour: but for this cause came I unto 
this hour. Father, glorify Thy name; and I will 
pay the covenanted price.’ And now with that 
the bitterness of death is already past. The great 


182 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


trouble has passed off His soul, and communion 
with His Father is restored. And now, out of that 
sore but victorious experience, He returns to us and 
says to us: “‘ If any man serve Me, let him follow 
Me; and where I am there shall also My servant be.” 
My brethren, let us indeed follow such a Master. 
Let Nature cry out; let our hearts be never so 
much staggered and perplexed; let never so deep 
waters come over our head; let all God’s waves 
and billows burst as they please upon us. Only at 
that awful hour let us follow Christ; let us call 
on Christ, and determine in His strength to imitate 
Him; and as He was so shall we immediately be 
in our trouble: faith and obedience shall win the 
victory. 

And now, in His resignation and submission, in 
the consequent communion with His Father that 
follows this hour and power of darkness, our Lord 
looks up and faces without fear those ominous 
Greeks. He can now bear to look on them. He 
beams on them now and blesses them. He sees 
what Isaiah calls “‘ His seed”’ flocking up behind 
them. Nay, who can tell but at that rapt and 
supreme moment He was shown some of ourselves, 
and saw from what His death would save some of 
us: till, from the sight and the thought, He drank 
in fresh strength and devotion and resolution till He 
was able to utter this great promise and prophecy— 
‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” 


THE CORN OF WHEAT 133 


And, most mercifully to us, it has all come about, 
as that day He said it would. He has been so 
lifted up that He has drawn us. His Cross has 
become the true rendezvous and universal resort 
of the chief of sinners. The Desire of all nations 
was never found till Christ was crucified. But 
Christ crucified, like a Divine loadstone, has drawn 
to Calvary a multitude that no man can number 
of guilty and broken hearts. Calvary is the true 
centre and sanctuary of this fallen and broken 
world. The Cross, like a Divine keystone, holds 
its tottering and falling fabric together. By Christ 
and by His Cross “ all things consist.” 


‘“‘Hath He marks to lead me to Him 
If He be my Guide ? 
In His feet and hands are wound-prinis, 
And His side! 


Is there diadem, as Monarch, 
That His brow adorns ? 
Yea, a crown in very surety, 
But of thorns!” 


And it is as so lifted up, so stricken, so smitten of 
God, and so afflicted, that He ever draws me. It 
is as wounded for my transgressions and bruised 
for mine iniquities, and as so lifted up, that I can 
dare to come near to Him. But as so lifted up 
by the Father, His Father and my Father, He 
draws me to Him with all the intolerable burden 
of my sins and my sinfulness upon me. No one 


184 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


else so draws me. Not God, unless God in Christ ; 
not man, unless the Man Christ Jesus. And no 
other Christ Jesus but the Christ Jesus of the Cross. 
No man knoweth or careth for my soul but this 
Man of my sorrows. All men else, when I come to 
them in my sin and misery, say to me, “‘ See thou 
to that.’”’ But Jesus Christ and Him crucified, He 
draws me. As I come to Him with such confidence 
and such a confession, I am a wonder and an 
astonishment to myself. But still He draws me as 
often as Christ Crucified is preached unto me. 
Again, and even now, He draws me. As I speak 
of Him and hear of Him He again takes the millstone 
off my neck, opens my prison-house, and pays my 
uttermost farthing. He takes off my fetters and 
puts a new song in my mouth: ‘O Lord,” I am 
constrained to sing, “O Lord, truly I am Thy 
servant, I am Thy servant and the son of Thine 
handmaid: Thou hast loosed my bonds.’’ And as 
I so come and so sing He hides me continually in 
the shadow of His cross as in a pavilion, shielding 
me, as I know very well, both from the righteous 
wrath of God and from the angry strife of men. 
**T will draw all men unto Me.’ Yea, Lord, if 
Thou hast drawn me, and received me, and saved 
me—then all men may well yield to Thee, and trust 
in Thee, and abide in Thee. 

‘And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me. 
This He said, signifying what death He should die.”’ 


XT 
THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 


** Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
his life for his friends. Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever 
I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the 
servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called 
you friends ; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have 
made known unto you.”—JOHN xv. 13-15. 


JouHN has the supreme distinction, and the ever- 
lasting honour, of having been our Lord’s most 
intimate friend on earth. And what an exalted 
light that casts on the character of John, on the 
qualities of his mind, and on the disposition of his 
heart! Who are his friends? we ask when we 
would know all about a man. Who is his most 
intimate friend? we ask. Now, do you ask that 
question about Zebedee’s second son? Well,—he 
was ‘‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’”’ He was 
the one of the Twelve who leaned on his Master’s 
bosom at the Last Supper. And he was the 
disciple, above even her own sons and daughters, 
to whom Jesus from the Cross committed the care 
of His heart-broken mother. 

Our Lord at the opening of His ministry had a 


135 


136 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


whole multitude of disciples who followed Him 
about. But both the needs of His heart and the 
nature of His work led our Lord to make a selection, 
and to choose an inner circle of more special friends 
out of that large and loose multitude. And after 
much close observation of the conduct and the 
character of twelve men out of that multitude, 
and after much prayer, our Lord at last chose those 
twelve men to have them always with Him. But 
as time went on, both the drawing of His own heart, 
and the deeper discovery that the Twelve made of 
their capacities and their characters, led their 
Master to make yet another selection of still more 
special friends, inside the circle even of the Twelve. 
And thus it comes to pass that, as the Gospels go 
on from chapter to chapter, we read less and less 
of the nameless mzne, and more and more of the 
oft-named three—‘‘ Peter, James, and John.” And 
then, even of the select three, John more and more 
stands out as the loved disciple,—the special, and 
peculiar, and by far the most intimate friend of his 
Master. 

The foundation of all friendship is always laid 
in likeness,—in likeness of nature; in likeness of 
character; in likeness of mind and of judgment ; 
in likeness of tastes, pursuits, and occupations. 
What a certification, then, that is concerning John’s 
mind and character and tastes and pursuits—to be 
told that, out of all the men that our Lord met 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 137 


with on earth, John was the man He best loved 
and made His closest friend! And, more than 
that, “‘ Henceforth I call you not servants,” said 
our Lord, “‘ but I have called you friends, for all 
things that I have heard of My Father I have made 
known unto you.” Tried by this test also, what 
a close and intimate friend of his Master John must 
have been! For, how far beyond all the other 
disciples, apostles, and evangelists John stands in 
his knowledge of the things that our Lord had heard 
of His Father! So far beyond all the other Gospels, 
in this respect, is John’s Gospel, that it reads less 
like a disciple’s writing than an immediate revela- 
tion of the things of the Father made to man by 
the Son Himself. The depth, the inwardness, the 
heavenliness, the supreme divineness of John’s 
Gospel makes it a perfect miracle of revelation 
and inspiration. Tried, then, by the test of his 
Gospel also,—how close must have been the like- 
ness, how deep the love, and how perfect the friend- 
ship between Jesus and John! 

Friendship has had a rich literature all to itself 
in all ages of the world. But, than Lord Bacon’s 
Twenty-Seventh Essay there has never been any- 
thing better written on this fruitful subject of 
Friendship. The study of that matchless piece 
of writing, taken along with the annotations of its 
best editors, will throw a flood of fresh and in- 
structive light on this subject which has so much 


188 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


to do with all men’s usefulness and happiness. 
Beginning with the famous passage on Solitude, 
Bacon goes on with all his superb strength of under- 
standing, and with all his overflowing wealth of 
illustration, to descant on the two great offices and 
fruits of Friendship,—in relieving the overburdened 
heart of man; and in clearing up and correcting 
his confused understanding. 

And our own Edward Irving, a great student of 
the great masters and the great models, has a 
sermon on this subject not unworthy to stand along- 
side even of Lord Bacon’s Essay. In his fine 
sermon on Friendship, Irving discovers to us the 
noble office which a good and faithful friend can 
perform for us in the pilgrimage of this present life. 
According to Irving, the great office of a friend is 
to try our thoughts by the measure of his judgment ; 
to task the wholesomeness of our designs and 
purposes by the feelings of his heart ; to protect us 
from the selfish and solitary part of our nature; to 
speak to and to call out those finer and better 
qualities of our nature which the customs of this 
world stifle ; and to open up to us a career worthy 
of our powers. And lastly, to succour us in our 
straits, rally us in our defeats, and bind our spirit 
in its distresses. ‘“‘ Now,’ adds Irving, “as every 
man hath these four attributes,—infirmity of 
judgment, selfishness of disposition, inactivity 
and inertness of nature, and adversity of fortunes 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 139 


—so every man needeth the help of a friend, and 
should do his endeavour to obtain one.” 

1. Well, then, that being so, God, our best 
Friend, has appointed us sphere after sphere, and 
opportunity after opportunity, in which to form 
friendships, in which to make friends to ourselves, 
and in which to become the friends of other men. 
And it is in family life, it is at home and among 
our own kindred and blood relations, that our first 
friendships are formed, and our hearts first exer- 
cised in those duties and affections in which the 
life of true friendship consists. And since, ulti- 
mately, all true friendship has its roots in likeness, 
the original and primary friendships of the family 
are laid by nature herself in a deep and essential 
likeness, out of which the whole rich and various 
life of human and divine, earthly and heavenly, 
friendships is intended to spring up. 


**T, ere thou spak’st, 
Knew it not good for man to be alone.... 
What next I bring shall please thee, be assured, 
Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, 
Thy wish exactly to thy heart’s desire.” 


And then, out of this sweet and fruitful likeness 
and consequent friendship of husband and wife, 
there spring by God’s appointment all the other 
likenesses and friendships of parent and child, 
brother and sister, and all our other kith and kin. 
To honour and to obey our parents is the first way, 


140 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and the best way, to honour and to obey God; and 
to love, and serve, and give way to, our brothers 
and our sisters is the divinely appointed path 
toward loving, and assisting, and acting along with 
all men as our brethren. A friend of mine, a 
minister’s son, died lately, who, without the inter- 
vention or assistance of tutor or schoolmaster, 
stepped out of his father’s study, already able to 
face and to take the lead in the full curriculum of 
even the Aberdeen University. And so is it, so 
should it be in the moral, social, and religious life 
of every well-brought-up boy. He should be so 
exercised and disciplined into the domestic virtues 
of obedience and submission, self-command and 
self-control, respect and reverence, sympathy, 
wistfulness, and love, that he shall, on his entrance 
on public life, at once become a power for good, 
and a pattern and a support of religion and of 
virtue, wherever his lot is cast. This is what 
should be; but, alas! it is not always so even in 
the best of homes, and where one would expect 
the best of results. It was not so even in that in- 
comparably favoured home in Nazareth, in which 
Joseph was father, and Mary mother, and Jesus 
eldest brother. What could it have been that so 
split up, and alienated—not to say embittered— 
the hearts of that heavenly home? There must 
have been some fatal lack, somewhere, in that 
otherwise so happy house. There must have been 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 141 


some sad want of likeness, sympathy, and friendli- 
ness somewhere in Joseph’s house. Else—why 
were His brothers and His sisters so blind to our 
Lord’s presence among them—so blind that all 
Galilee and Jewry believed in Him before His own 
brothers believed? Else—how could they have 
eaten at the same table, and gone up to the same 
synagogue, for thirty years alongside of our Lord, 
and never have discovered it? Our Lord had to 
seek His friends outside of His mother’s house, 
and beyond His own blood: else, why were none 
of His brothers numbered among His disciples ? 
Else, why, when dying on the Cross, did our Lord 
commit the care of His mother to John and not to 
her own sons and daughters ? 

No; family life is not always successful even 
in the most favourable households. While, again, 
the very best results are sometimes seen in the 
most unlikely places. 

2. When we are still young and inexperienced 
and warm-hearted, we think that the life of 
affection has only to have free scope and full oppor- 
tunity allowed it in order to turn earth into heaven. 
Love fills our future ideal home, and friendship 
fills our future ideal world. But unless we are 
better taught than that dream, we are doomed to 
bitter disappointment. Love, real and true love; 
and friendship, real and true friendship,—if they 
are to become our life companions, and are to 


142 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


¢ 


abide and be at home with us, must be “ rooted 
and grounded ”’ in us as all our other virtues and 
graces are rooted and grounded. ‘That is to say, 
they must be practised and acted on—on principle, 
and indeed by rule. True love, true friendship, is 
a habit of mind and heart and will; and like all 
our other habits of mind and heart and will, our 
love and our friendship must be built up, drawn 
out, developed and perfected by constant and 
studious exercise. A man who would have friends 
must show himself friendly. He must not take it 
for granted that his lovers and his friends will 
stick to him whatever he does to them. He must 
study the arts and he must live the life of a friend. 
He must show forethought and take trouble. He 
must weed out of his heart all those tempers and 
passions that injure friendship; and he must 
plant and water all those acts and habits that 
support and perpetuate friendship. As Dr. Johnson 
said to James Boswell, he must keep his friendships 
in constant repair. In an exquisite sermon on 
this subject, Dr. Newman says: “ The real love of 
man must depend on practice; and therefore it 
must begin by exercising itself on our friends 
around us, otherwise it will have no existence. By 
trying to love our relations and friends, and by 
submitting to their wishes, though contrary to our 
own; by bearing with their infirmities; by over- 
coming their occasional waywardness by kindness ; 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 148 


by dwelling on their excellences, and trying to copy 
them—thus it is that we form in our hearts that 
root of charity, which, though small at first, will 
afterwards, like the mustard seed, at last cover the 
earth.”’ 

3. But, not seldom, after all that our homes can 
give us, and after all that we can do to make friends 
in our own homes, we have not seldom to go out- 
side of our own homes for the full satisfaction of 
our hearts, and for the full assistance and enjoy- 
ment of friendship. It was so with our Lord. He 
had to leave—all unwillingly, we may be quite 
sure—James and Joses and Simon and Judas 
behind Him in His mother’s house, and go outside 
to seek His best friends: till, happy for them, He 
found His best friends in Peter and James and John. 
Those three happy men afforded our Lord that 
likeness of mind and heart, that sympathy and that 
support and that love which His heart craved for, 
and which His life and His lifework demanded. 
And so it is sometimes with ourselves. It will 
sometimes happen that we shall get a sympathy, a 
support, an encouragement, an affection, out of 
doors, that neither father nor mother, nor sister 
nor brother, nor wife nor child, can give us. ‘‘ Thy 
friend,” says Scripture, “which is as thine own 
soul.” There is a climax in the full passage,—a 
climax up which this man’s soul is seen climbing, 
still seeking more and more love. ‘“‘ Thy brother,”’ 


144 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


so the passage runs: “the son of thy mother, or 
thy son or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, 
or thy friend, which is as thine own soul.” 

4. Now, what do you say and what do you 
think ? Suppose you had lived in Galilee in our 
Lord’s day, would He have made you one of His 
friends? Would you have made Him one of your 
friends ? When chilled at heart, and thrown back 
upon Himself at home, would Jesus have sought 
you out till He felt Himself warmed and com- 
forted and restored as He walked the sands of the 
Sea of Gennesaret with you? Would you have 
set your other lovers and friends aside to walk with 
Him? Would He have chosen you to tell you the 
secrets of His heart? What would you have said 
to Him when He told you His awful apprehension 
about Himself, and about the future that His 
Father seemed to be preparing for Him? What 
would you have said to your Friend when He said 
to you one Sabbath day coming home from the 
synagogue—“In the Volume of the book it is 
written of Me’’? What would you have talked 
about by the way as you went up to Jerusalem to 
the Passover together? Would He have taken 
you with Him to Jordan to the baptism of John ? 
What would you have done when John pointed 
you to your old Friend and said, “‘ Behold, the 
Lamb of God’? And when Jesus, after a night 
of prayer over their names, chose twelve—would 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 145 


we have had your name in our New Testament 
among them? Would He have asked you to sit 
next to Him at the Passover Supper? Would He 
have asked you to watch an hour with Him in the 
garden ? Oh, you say, would it have been possible ? 
Is it conceivable? Yes, quite possible, quite 
conceivable. It is quite conceivable that there 
are men in this house at this moment who, had 
their lot been cast in the days of our Lord, 
would have been found, not only among the Twelve, 
but among the Three. Do those who are the 
friends of Jesus Christ, those who have His mind 
and who do His work—do they seek you out ? 
When dispirited and downcast and alone, do they 
come to you? Do you minister to them of your 
substance ? Do you share your secrets with them, 
and do they share their secrets with you? Are 
you often at their table, and they at yours? And 
do you all but, as if you were in Jerusalem, take 
them to your bosom at supper? Whose house are 
you oftenest in? Whom do you honour and defend 
with most warmth? Whom, in short, do you 
most love? I need not say more. By that you 
will know where you would have been found in 
Galilee and Jewry. By that you may know where 
you will be found when Jesus Christ calleth His 
friends into His Father’s house in heaven. 

5. ‘‘ Greater love hath no man than this, that a 


man lay down his life for his friends.” Has this 
10 


146 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Man, then, laid down His life for you? He has, 
if you have ever asked Him to do it. He has, if 
you have ever accepted Him as doing it for you. 
Well, then, Has He? Do you think He has? 
Have you any hope that He has? Did you ever 
ask Him to do it? Did it ever come to this pass 
with you—either your life or His? And, at that 
terrible moment, did He say—*‘I am the sinner’s 
surety: take Me and let him go his way”’? And 
ever since that night of substitution and purchase, 
have you gone your way a redeemed man? When 
did that transaction between Him and you take 
place? Where did it take place? Could you 
show me the spot? How long is it ago? And 
what manner of man have you been ever since ? 
And, as often as your life has been again and again 
forfeited, has He interposed again, and again laid 
down His life for you? Then, you are His friend. 
If all that is so, you are His friend, and He is your 
Friend. And greater love hath no man for any of 
his friends than this Man hath for you. 

6. And then, as the dearest friends ought to do, 
—sometimes, and indeed often, tell your Friend 
how much you love Him, for all this as well as for 
Himself. Though your unkindness and unfaith- 
fulness have been such that it stabs you to the 
heart to speak about your love to Him alongside 
of it, yet do it. Trample upon your pride and do 
it; trample upon your shame and do it. What- 


THE MASTER AND HIS FRIENDS 147 


ever it costs you to do it, doit. Tell Him boldly 
how much you love Him. “ Thou knowest that 
I love Thee! ”’ retorted Peter, driven half mad with 
love and with misery, and with his Master’s im- 
portunity. And still, his Master would have Peter 
say it, and say it again, and say it again. Nothing 
would satisfy Peter’s Master that day on the sands 
of the Sea of Galilee but that Peter must say it 
again and again and again, how much he loved 
his Master. Commentators and preachers who have 
no heart in them labour to discover why it was that 
Jesus asked Peter three times that sweet question. 
But no man who ever brought his heart with him 
to that fine chapter ever felt any difficulty with 
our Lord’s hunger for Peter’s love, and for the over 
and over again confession of Peter’s love. 

“Margaret, never was woman loved so tenderly 
as thou hast been loved,” said a silent husband to 
his dying wife. “I knew it,” was her answer, “I 
knew it ; but I could not die happy till I had heard 
thee say it. Ah! how I have pined for that sweet | 
word! I had to die to get it, but I do not grudge 
the price.” Say it then to your Friend, say it to 
your Husband. And when you have once 
summoned up strength of heart to say how much 
you have always loved Him, say it, like Peter, 
three times. You feel it, and He knows that you 
feel it; then say it. And He will not grudge the 
price. 


XII 
THE HONOURABLE NAME 


** And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”— 
AcTS xi. 26. 


‘“‘ THE history of a single word,” says a great writer, 
“ will sometimes tell us more than the history of a 
whole campaign.” And the history of this single 
word “ Christians’’ is the best possible case in 
point. The word “ Christ,’’ from which the word 
“‘ Christian ’’ comes, was originally a Greek word, 
and it simply meant one anointed with holy oil. 
The first time we meet with holy oil is in the 
narrative of Jacob’s experiences at Bethel. ‘“ And 
Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely 
the Lord is in this place! . . . And Jacob took the 
stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up 
for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And 
he called the name of that place Beth-el.’’ And 
from that memorable morning, all down the Old 
Testament, wherever there was a spot of common 
earth to be consecrated, or a common man to be 
set apart and sanctified as a priest, or a sovereign 
to be enthroned and crowned, Jacob’s holy oil was 
14 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 149 


always employed for that sacred purpose. Till 
holy oil came to be one of the most impressive, as 
well as one of the most universal, of all the sacra- 
mental signs and seals in the Old Testament Church. 
And it continued to be so, till all consecration, 
and all sacrifice, and all sovereignty, came to their 
consummation in the Christ of God. And thus it 
is that His Old Testament name, The Messiah, and 
His New Testament name, The Christ, and His 
English name, The Anointed One, contain and 
convey to us the whole heavenly history of His 
election from everlasting, His predestination, His 
calling, His consecration, and His complete equip- 
ment, in every way, for all the offices He now fills as 
the Incarnate Son of God, and the only Redeemer 
of men. When our Lord first announced Himself 
to Israel, He opened the Book, and found the place 
where it was written of Him: “The Spirit of the 
Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to 
preach the Gospel to the poor: He hath sent Me 
to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance 
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised.” 
This, then, is the true Messiah, the true Christ, the 
true Anointed,—the true and only Christ of God, 
as the New Testament continually calls Him. 
Even as Peter opened his mouth, and began to 
preach Christ to Cornelius and to all his house, in 
these very words: ‘“‘ How God anointed Jesus of 


150 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power: 
Who went about doing good, and healing all that 
were oppressed of the devil; for God was with 
Him.” 

And this is how this great name, “‘ The Christ,” 
came to be given to the Man Jesus of Nazareth, 
above all other men. Almighty God took that 
chosen Man and anointed Him, as never before, 
with the Holy Ghost. That is to say, God filled 
the Man Jesus of Nazareth as full as human nature 
could hold of the mind, and the spirit, and the 
grace, and the power, of the Divine Nature. And 
having so anointed Him, God then presented Him 
to Israel, and through Israel to the whole world, 
as the Son of God made flesh, and in His flesh filled 
with the Holy Ghost. But no sooner was Jesus of 
Nazareth offered to Israel than that tremendous 
contention arose which fills the whole of the New 
Testament,—that tremendous contention as to 
whether Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s Son, 
was, indeed, the Christ of God, or no. We have 
the whole case and the whole contention put before 
us in the prayer of Peter and John recorded in the 
Book of the Acts. ‘“‘ The kings of the earth stood 
up, and the rulers were gathered together against 
the Lord, and against His Christ. For, of a truth, 
against Thy Holy Child Jesus, Whom Thou hast 
anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the 
Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 151 


together.” And that Holy and Blessed Name 
being then bestowed on God’s Incarnate Son, in 
process of time the same name came to be bestowed 
upon all His disciples, as our present text begins to 
tell us. I do not know that our first reading of this 
text would convey to us what all students of the 
New Testament are agreed upon. That is to say— 
that the name, a Christian, was in the first instance 
a name of mockery and contempt: it was intended 
to be an opprobrium and an insult. “ Among 
themselves,” says Neander, “ they were called the 
Disciples of the Lord, the Disciples of Jesus, the 
Brethren, the Believers, and such-like names. The 
Jews in contempt called them the Galileans, the 
Nazarenes, the paupers—and such-like names of 
scorn. But the Jews would, of course, never call 
them Christians, because that would have been to 
admit that the Messiah had come, and that these 
men were His true disciples. But now, when the 
new religion was spread among the Gentiles, its 
professors appeared to them to be an entirely new 
sect, a genus tertium, as they were sometimes 
termed, as being neither Jews nor Gentiles. And 
as the term Christ was held to be a proper name, 
the adherents of this new religious teacher were 
distinguished by a name formed from their Master’s 
name, just as the adherents of any school of 
philosophy were wont to be named after its 
founder.” And as this is both an interesting and 


152 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


an important point, take this also from Trench’s 
Study of Words. ‘‘ What light it throws on the 
whole story of the Apostolic Church to know when 
and where this name of Christians was first imposed 
on the faithful: for, imposed by adversaries it 
certainly was, not devised by themselves, however 
afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as 
the name of highest dignity and honour. They did 
not call themselves, but, as it is expressly recorded, 
they were called Christians first at Antioch... . 
And as it was a name imposed by adversaries, so 
among those adversaries, it was plainly heathens, 
and not Jews, who were its authors: for Jews 
would never have called the followers of Jesus of 
Nazareth, Christians, or those belonging to the 
Christ, the very point of their own opposition to 
Him being that He was not the Christ promised 
to their fathers, but a false pretender to the name.” 
“Those,” says Tacitus, “‘whom the mob call 
Christians.”” Antioch, as we know, was notorious 
for its jesting and jeering practices; and, strange 
to say, the noblest name in earth and heaven was 
first coined in scorn by the jesting mob of Antioch. 
Now, from that far-off day in Antioch, this great 
name has come down through all the intervening 
ages, gathering honour and glory from every new 
generation of Christian men: till, to-day, we all 
bear that noblest of names. And till, instead of its 
being nowadays a jest or an insult to be called a 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 153 


Christian, our only real anxiety about ourselves, 
and about those we love, is whether or no we are 
worthy to bear that noblest of names. For if we 
are worthy to bear it—blessed are we above all 
other men. Whereas, if we bear the name of Christ, 
and are, all the time, not worthy to bear it—there 
is no case so sad on the face of the earth as is our 
case. Let us all examine ourselves, then, in the 
bright and searching light of this name that we all 
bear. And then, let us all act according as we 
discover ourselves to be, Christians, or no: real 
and true Christians, or only Christians by name, 
and no more than by the mere name. 

This name—‘“‘a Christian ’’—1is of such elasticity 
and liberality in our language, that it admits of 
many senses, and is employed by us, every day, in 
many steps and stages of meaning. 

To begin with: a child among us is accounted 
to be a Christian child simply by his birth and his 
baptism. Already, and before he knows his right 
hand from his left, or has done either good or evil, 
but purely in virtue of his birth of Christian parents, 
and his reception into the visible Church by the 
ordinance of baptism, he already takes the high 
rank of a Christian child. How he is, eventually, 
to turn out, whether he is to be a truly Christian 
man or no, remains to be seen. But by the mere 
fact of his being born in a Christian home, and 
then by his visible incorporation into the Christian 


154 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Church by the sacrament of Baptism, we reckon him 
a Christian child. The term is employed in this 
same elastic and liberal way, when we speak of the 
Christian era ; when we speak of a Christian land, 
of Christian civilisation, and Christian art, and so 
on. Everybody understands, and admits the large 
and loose sense in which this great word is employed 
in all such cases. 

It is a great advance in the proper use of this 
word when it is still applied to that child when he 
has risen in years, and in reflection, and in choice, 
till he is a convinced and a confirmed Christian 
man. 

In both the classes last week, we came on a 
somewhat startling contradiction, as it seemed to 
us at first sight, in Dr. Chalmers’s estimate of 
Bishop Butler. To begin with—we found 
Chalmers early in his ministerial life writing to a 
friend of his and saying: ‘‘ It was Butler that made 
me a Christian.” And then, in going through 
Chalmers’s lectures on Butler, delivered far on in 
his professorial life, we were startled to come on 
such outspoken condemnations of Butler as these: 
“‘ Butler’s meagre and moderate theology’; “his 
lax and superficial creed’; ‘‘ he is entirely devoid 
of the sal evangelicum’’; “‘his is a heart not 
thoroughly evangelised.’’ We were so staggered 
by these so contradictory-looking estimates of 
Butler, and of his services to Chalmers, that we 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 155 


were compelled to go more deeply into Chalmers 
himself, and into his changed conception of what 
constituted true Christianity, in order to find, if 
possible, some explanation of his immense acknow- 
ledgments to Butler on the one hand, and his severe 
censures of the same great man, on the other hand. 
And we found the whole explanation in the fact 
that Chalmers was employing the word—‘a 
Christian’’—in two wholly different senses, in his 
early correspondence and in his mature discourses. 
In the former case he was writing as a Christian 
philosopher ; and in the latter case he was speak- 
ing as a deeply experienced Christian man. We 
found that Chalmers’s own heart was very far from 
being “‘ thoroughly evangelised’’ in the beginning of 
his ministry ; and that, neither in his experience 
nor in his pulpit, was there a single grain, as yet, 
of what he afterwards called the sal evangelicum. 
And indeed, there is nothing in our Scottish litera- 
ture more instructive, and more impressive, than 
just Dr. Hanna’s account of how Dr. Chalmers was 
led out of his “‘ meagre and moderate’ beginnings, 
and brought into the full light, and life, and power, 
of evangelical experience. Butler’s Christianity 
was quite enough for Chalmers at one time; but, 
after he had passed through the great change that 
his son-in-law narrates with such insight and 
sympathy, it was only then that he became the 
Chalmers that we all revere and love, and to whom 


¢ 


156 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


we are all so much indebted. Butler immensely 
strengthened Chalmers’s early hold of Christianity 
on its intellectual and ethical side. Till, philosophic- 
ally and apologetically speaking, Butler may be 
said to have made Chalmers a Christian in his 
intellectual convictions, as he has made so many 
other men. But it is a very impressive and a very 
illuminating fact that Dr. Hanna applies to 
Chalmers’s early Christianity some of the very 
epithets of condemnation and complaint that 
Chalmers afterwards applied to Butler. 

No better illustration could be given of the way 
that the word “‘a Christian’’ penetrates and 
deepens, from the mind down into the heart, and 
the will, and the character, than just the case of 
Dr. Chalmers. His classical Life by Dr. Hanna 
exhibits with great power the steady deepening, 
and enriching, and ennobling of a great life and a 
great ministry, through the steady deepening of 
his sense of sin and need, and his correspondingly 
increasing discovery of Jesus Christ as his wisdom, 
and righteousness, and sanctification. Read and 
re-read Dr. Hanna’s classical Life of Dr. Chalmers. 

There used to be a widespread pulpit and private 
literature among the Puritans of England, and the 
Presbyterians of Scotland, in which the marks, and 
evidences, and seals, of a truly Christian man were 
discussed with immense ability and with great 
enjoyment and profit to the people who were 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 157 


interested in such matters. Baxter’s Saints’ Rest 
and Brea’s Autobiography have preserved to this 
day some first-rate remains of these experimental 
discussions. If it should be said that our fore- 
fathers carried that self-scrutiny much too far, it 
must be said, on the other hand, that in redressing 
the balance we have gone much too far the other 
way. For the most part, we take our Christianity 
just as it comes to us. We take little or no real 
trouble to ask ourselves whether we are true 
Christians or no. We leave all those ques’ions to 
Him Who will make no mistake when He takes our 
case in hand. But if there should be any one here 
this morning who has any serious interest as to his 
own spiritual state in the sight of his Redeemer and 
his Judge—I can think of no better questions of 
self-examination than just such as these: What 
think you of Christ? When do you think of 
Him? And how often and how long at a time do 
you think of Him? “TI never thought whether 
there was a Christ or no,’ confesses John Bunyan 
in his Grace Abounding. Now, “ As aman thinketh 
in his heart, so is he ’’—that is a true and a time- 
honoured test. 

Then again, what books do you like best ? and 
upon what kind of books and papers do you spend 
most of your time and your money? I read most 
in the books I like best. I buy most of the books 
I like best. I give presents of the books I myself 


158 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


like best. To go no further—if I showed you the 
books I like best, you would judge quite well as 
to whether I am truly a Christian man or no. 
(That should be said with some reserve, I admit ; 
but to a great extent, and as it touches most men, 
let us believe that it is not very far from the truth.) 
And then, as to the pulpit: What books of the 
Bible do you like best to have opened up to you? 
And what texts in those books? And what great 
words and _ great expressions—say in Paul’s 
Epistles-—-who was by far the most Christian 
preacher of all the apostles. What psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs do you like best? And 
what do you oftenest sing to yourself as you lie 
down and as you rise up? ‘“ Read where I first 
cast my anchor,” said John Knox on his death- 
bed. Where did you first cast your anchor? And 
where shall we read to you when you are just 
about to die? 

I could risk a good deal, both for you and for 
myself, on such tests and trials and self-examina- 
tions as these. But we are not left to ourselves 
to seek out our best and surest marks and evidences 
and tests and trials. The Judge has been good 
enough, among all His other goodnesses, to foretell 
us some of the ways in which our Christianity will 
be tested and tried by Himself on that day. ‘‘ Not 
every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that 


THE HONOURABLE NAME 159 


doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” 
And, again—‘‘ Afterward came also the other 
virgins, saying, Open to us! But He answered and 
said to them, Verily I say unto you, I know you 
not.” ‘“‘ Then shall the King say unto them on 
His right hand, Come ye blessed of My Father. 
For, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of 
these My brethren, ye did it unto Me.”’ 

“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth 
sure, having this seal—The Lord knoweth them 
that are His.” 

To sum up, and to sum up in the words of an old 
writer : 


‘“‘Four things go to constitute a Christian: 
Faith makes a man a Christian. 
Life proves a man a Christian. 
Trials confirm a man a Christian. 
And death crowns a man a Christian.” 


May you all be so confirmed and so crowned! 
Amen ! 


XIIf 
A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 


** To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth 
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.’’—Rom. iv. 5. 


On Sabbath morning, the 11th of May last, I 
preached from this pulpit on this selfsame text: 
“To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him 
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for 
righteousness.”” I do not know how it has been 
with you in your own souls all summer, but I can 
say before you and before God that this glorious 
Scripture has been my meat and my drink, my 
strength and my salvation all that time. And 
such has been my joy in this golden text that I have 
written my old sermon on it twice over again, 
during my holiday,—so indispensably precious is 
its truth to me apart from preaching altogether. 
And though I were to write this sermon over and 
over again, every week I live, and were to preach it 
again and again to you every Sabbath I live—I 
would only, in that, be imitating the example and ~ 
the counsel of the Apostle, who declared that he 
was determined to know nothing else in his 


160 


A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 161 


preaching but such apostolical and evangelical 
doctrine as this. 

Well, then—once more—Romans chapter four 
and verse five: ‘To him that worketh not, but 
believeth as 

It is a strange thing, my brethren, and it is a sad 
thing that it should be so difficult to preach the 
pure Gospel: to preach the pure, and undiluted, 
and unadulterated Gospel, and to make it always 
fresh from the same preacher, and always fresh to 
the same people. The revivalists keep to the pure 
Gospel, and they have their reward. But not, for 
the most part, your educated and ordained and 
settled preachers and pastors. I only remember 
once in all my long life hearing this great Gospel 
text taken up; and it was not by a regular and 
ordained preacher. It was more than forty years 
ago; and it was by Professor William Martin, of 
the Moral Philosophy Chair in Old Aberdeen. I 
still see the scene, that far-off summer Sabbath 
evening, on the green lawn before the door of 
Parkhill House. The Professor’s address made 
an immense inipression on me, and on many more 
besides me, and I have never forgotten it. I may 
have heard better lecturers on Logic and Moral 
Philosophy than Professor Martin; but I have 
never heard better Gospel preaching than his 
preaching was that sweet Sabbath evening. And 


his text that evening was these great words of 
be 





162 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the Apostle,—‘‘to him that worketh not, but 
believeth.” Let us also give our whole strength 
to this great Gospel text this morning. 

And, to begin with—*‘ work,”’ as you know, is a 
word that the Apostle is constantly using. ‘‘ Work”’ 
is almost a technical term in Paul’s great evangelical 
Epistles. Every great science, every great art, 
every great doctrine and discipline, has its own 
special terminology, its own “ technical terms,” as 
we call them. Every new discovery, every new 
invention, every new doctrine and development 
of doctrine, demands a new name to describe it, 
to contain it, and to convey it. 

Now, though it is quite true that this word 
“work ’’ is one of our most familiar words, at the 
same time, when the Apostle takes that word up 
into his great Gospel vocabulary, he straightway 
fills that familiar word of ours with all the fulness 
of his own inward and profound and spiritual mean- 
ing. He fills our word “ work ”’ full with such new 
meanings and with such deep meanings that it takes 
us all our days to get at his meanings, and to get 
this one word of his well into our inexperienced and 
unspiritual minds. 

“To work,” in the ordinary and everyday sense 
of that word, is just to do this and that with our 
hands. It is to dig, and keep, and dress a garden. 
It is to plough, and sow, and reap a field. It is to 
found, and build, and furnish a house. We speak 


A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 163 


of workshops also, and of workmen, and work- 
women. As the Fourth Commandment has it: 
“Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.”’ 
But there are other and greater commandments 
than the Fourth, great as it is; and there is far 
greater work for us all to do than our six days’ 


work, weighty as that work is. “ Master,’ said 
one in the Gospel, “‘ which is the great Command- 
ment in the law?” Jesus said to him: “ Thou 


shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
with all thy strength and with all thy mind; and 
thy neighbour as thyself.’’ 

And thus it is that this greatest and most all- 
comprehending of all the commandments is laid, 
not upon our hands only, but upon our hearts; till 
it embraces and demands for itself, not only all 
that we do but much more all that we think, and 
all that we feel, and all that we wish, and all that 
we desire. Paul’s “ work,’’ when we come to see 
it, is every breath we draw ; it is every beat of our 
heart, and every glance of our eye, and every tone 
of our voice; it is every sigh of ours, and every 
smile. All we are, and all we have, and all we do, 
must be wholly given up to God and our neighbour : 
just as God gives up Himself and our neighbour to 
us. God is love; and love is the fulfilling, both in 
Him and in us, of God’s holy law. 

Now, that being so, that being well understood, 
is it not a very strange thing, is it not a very 


164 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


startling thing, that the Apostle should be found 
saying here what he does say? Should actually 
be found saying in the text—that “to him that 
worketh not’’: that is to say, to him who loves 
neither God nor his neighbour aright—such and 
such great blessings are offered to him, and are, 
indeed, pressed upon him. What does the Apostle 
mean? What can he mean when, after so 
spiritualising, and so ennobling, all our work, he 
goes on to discharge us from it all, and actually 
to say—‘‘ To him that worketh not” such and 
such indescribable blessings are pronounced and 
promised? One thing is certain: the Apostle 
cannot mean what, at first sight, he seems to mean. 
It is absolutely impossible that the inspired Apostle 
can mean that the man who does not endeavour, 
with all his might, to love God and his neighbour, 
can ever stand accepted before God. No; Paul 
would be beside himself if he ever said that, or any- 
thing like that. But as it is, he has the mind of 
Christ, and he has the message of God to us, when 
he says—deliberately and authoritatively and con- 
clusively—‘ To him that worketh not.’’ That is to 
say—to him who cannot work; to him who, as 
God is his witness, would work if he were only able ; 
to him who struggles day and night, ay, agonises 
day and night to do this work and who has given 
up agonising after anything else ; to him who sets 
God and his neighbour before him continually— 


A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 165 


but the thing he would do, both to God and to his 
neighbour, he cannot attain to it. With all his 
good purposes, and with all his agonising prayers, 
he cannot attain to it. With all his sweat, and 
with all his tears, he cannot attain to it. He works 
his fingers to the bone; he bows his shoulder to the 
burden ; but with it all, and after it all, at the end 
of every day, he lays down his day’s work toward 
God and man, not only not done, but much further 
from ever being done than it was when he took it 
up. Oh, wretched man that he is! Who shall 
deliver such a helpless and miserable man ? 

That, then, is how the law of works handles every 
man who is under the law in this life. And that is 
how the same law will handle every such man when 
he stands before the bar of God on the day of 
judgment. ‘“ For we know that whatsoever things 
the law saith, it saith to them that are under the 
law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all 
the world may become guilty before God.’’ But 
what is this? What is this that is here preached 
to every man whose mouth is stopped? “ To him 
that worketh not’: that is to say—as we have seen 
—who cannot work: to him who, God knows, 
would work were he only able: “to him that 
worketh not, but believeth,” his faith in God, his 
faith in Christ, ‘‘is counted for righteousness.” 
What is this? What, O ambassador of God unto 
us—what is this? Tell me, till I clearly under- 


166 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


stand it, what this new and strange thing believing 
is? What—with all plainness of speech—is this 
faith, this believing to which such unheard-of things 
are everywhere promised ? 

Well, all true believing, all believing unto life, 
has in it three distinct steps or stages, the one stage 
growing out of the other, and reposing upon it. 
The very first step of all believing unto everlasting 
life is, simply, to believe what is written in the New 
Testament concerning Jesus Christ. ‘‘ And many 
other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His 
disciples, which are not written in this book. But 
these are written that ye might believe that Jesus 
is the Christ, the Son of God.’’ 

But let all our minds be kept the clearest possible 
at this point on this all-momentous matter. For I 
may believe what Matthew and Mark and Luke 
and John write about Jesus Christ—as I believe 
what Plutarch and Tacitus write about Cesar. 
That is to say, I may believe my New Testament 
with what our divines call an “‘historic”’ faith. 
Nay, I might even have stood on Calvary, and have 
seen Jesus Christ on the Cross with my own eyes, 
and yet might not have gone down to my own 
house justified. To be justified by faith I must 
believe that God hath set forth His Son “to be a 
propitiation through faith in His blood’’; that 
God might be just, and the justifier of him that 
believeth in Jesus. As Walter Marshall has it in 


A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 167 


his golden Gospel Mystery—‘‘ the former of these 
acts of believing doth not immediately unite us to 
Christ, because it termineth only on the Gospel: 
yet it is a saving act, so far as it goes, because it 
instructeth, and inclineth, and disposeth the soul 
to the latter act whereby Christ Himself is immedi- 
ately received into the heart. He that believeth 
the New Testament with hearty love and liking, 
as the most excellent truth, will certainly with the 
like heartiness believe on Christ for his salvation.” 
No doubt he will. 

And then, true saving faith, being once rooted 
in any man’s heart, it will under the Divine 
Husbandman’s gracious care grow up to the “ full 
assurance of faith ’’ as we see it growing up to full 
assurance in such great examples of faith, and full 
assurance, as Abraham in the Old Testament, and 
Paul himself in the New Testament. 

Let all our Gospel preachers, then, be deter- 
mined not to know anything in this matter among 
us save this, that “‘to him that worketh not ’”’— 
that is to say, to him who is absolutely beside him- 
self because the good that he would he does not, 
and the evil which he would not, that he does: to 
him who cries out continually, O wretched man 
that I am!—‘‘to him that worketh not, but 
believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his 
faith is counted for righteousness.”” Do you hear 
that, O men and women? Do you hear that, O all 


168 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


you who are of all sinners the chief? Do you 
hear that, O ye saints of His, who are still bearing 
about with you the body of this death? He with 
whom you have to do has many names; but His 
New Testament Name in the text is His best name 
for you to learn, and to know, and to have always 
in your mouth and in your heart—even this Gospel 
Name of His: ‘‘ Him that justifieth the ungodly.” 
O ungodly man, saint and sinner! learn, and know 
continually, this best Name of God for you. It is 
written in letters of His own blood over the mercy- 
seat. Look up and read it, as often as you again 
sin. Look up and see Him, where He sits—“ that 
He might be just and the justifier of him that 
believeth in Jesus.’’ Look up and believe on 
“Him who justifies the ungodly.’’ ‘“‘ What would 
I do,” exclaimed Dr. Chalmers on his death-bed, 
“if God did not justify the ungodly ? ”’ 

Come, then, O ungodly man, come! Come just 
as you are, and “‘ waiting not to rid your soul of one 
dark blot, to Him Whose blood can cleanse each 
spot.’ You are a great sinner. Yes; but God 
sent His Son, not to call the righteous, but sinners, 
and great sinners, to repentance. It was when 
every mouth was stopped that God set forth His 
Son to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. 
If you were not a great sinner, what justification 
would God have for not sparing His own Son? 
He did not send His Son to save small sinners, 


A GREAT GOSPEL TEXT 169 


and those who could save themselves. Man! He 
came to save you! ‘‘ Even as David describeth 
the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth 
righteousness without works, saying: Blessed are 
they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose 
sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the 
Lord will not impute sin.’’ ‘I should be glad to 
know,” wrote Luther in the year 1516 to Spenlein, 
an Augustinian monk—‘“ I should be very glad to 
know what is the state of your soul. When you 
were living with me we were both in this greatest 
of all errors—seeking to stand before God on the 
ground of our own works. I am still struggling 
against that fatal error, and have not even yet 
entirely triumphed over it. O, my dear brother,’ 
learn to know Christ, and Him crucified. Beware 
of pretending to such purity as no longer to confess 
thyself the Chief of Sinners. If our labours, and 
obediences, and afflictions could have given peace 
to the conscience, why should Christ have died on 
the Cross? You will never find true peace till 
you find it and keep it in this—that Christ takes 
all your sins upon Himself, and bestows all His 
righteousness upon you.’ And in 1585—when 
the Reformation had brought back the English 
pulpit to the Epistle to the Romans and to the 
article of a standing or falling Church—Richard 
Hooker spoke thus in his immortal sermon on 
Justification. And let his sermon be the cope- 


170 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


stone and crown of mine. “Christ hath merited 
righteousness for as many as are found in Him. 
And in Him God findeth us, if we be believers: 
for by believing, we are incorporated into Christ. 
Then, although in ourselves we be altogether 
sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man who is 
in himself impious, full of iniquity, full of sin— 
him being found in Christ through faith, and having 
his sin in hatred through repentance—him God 
beholdeth with a gracious eye, and accepteth him 
in Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous as if he had 
fulfilled all that is commanded him in the holy law 
of God,—shall I say accepteth him as more perfectly 
righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole 
law? I must take heed what I say; but the 
Apostle saith: “God hath made Him to be sin 
Who knew no sin, that we might be made the 
righteousness of God in Him.’ Let it be counted 
folly, or phrenzy, or fury, or whatsoever: it is our 
wisdom and our comfort: we care for no knowledge 
in the world but this—that man hath sinned and 
God hath suffered: that God hath made himself 
the sin of men, and that men are made the 
righteousness of God.”’ 

““ Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that 
we might work the works of God? Jesus answered 
and said to them, This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on Him Whom He hath sent.’”” Amen! For 
God will bless His own word ! 


XIV 
THE FOUR WINDS 


** After these things I saw four angels standing on the four 
corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that 
the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on 
any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, 
having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice 
to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the 
sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till 
we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.’’— 
REV. vii. I-3. 

THE whole habitable earth is here rolled out into 
one vast landscape under the eyes of the enraptured 
seer. Far down beneath his feet, John sees the 
high mountains and the deep valleys; the broad 
seas and the rolling rivers; the cornfields and the 
vineyards; the lonely wilderness and the peopled 
city. But what takes up the seer’s attention, far 
more than the various spectacle of the outspread 
earth, is a sight that now comes up upon his vision 
for the first time. Four mighty angels stand like 
four living watch-towers on the four corners of the 
widespread earth. And these four august spirits 
hold a special command from God to keep sleep- 
Tess watch and ward at the four great gates of the 


171 


172 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


earth. As the Cherubims stand to keep the way 
of the tree of life in Paradise, so do these four 
mighty creatures of God and elect angels of His 
Son keep the great gates of this beleaguered earth. 
Storm and tempest, fire and famine, whole seas of 
trouble rage around and beat up against their 
close-barred gates; but so vigilant are those four 
heavenly warders that not so much as one breath 
of angry air passes through their gates till they 
open and invite a way. Like wild beasts over- 
mastered and kept at bay, so are all earthly ills 
kept back by those mighty angels from doing any 
hurt to those whom they are posted there to protect. 

John is still wondering what all that can mean 
when he sees the four mighty watchmen all at once 
turn their eyes to the east. And behold, another of 
those angels who minister to them who shall be the 
heirs of salvation comes ascending out of the east 
as the morning sun comes. He comes clothed 
with light as with a garment ; the widespread earth 
shines bright under his glory; and his voice is as 
the sound of many waters. Answering to the 
great Keys that the four watching angels hold in 
their hands, the ascending angel holds in his hand 
the seal of the living God. And, addressing him- 
self to the four mighty Sentinels, he speaks to 
them with a voice that they hear above all the 
storms and tempests that war around the earth, 
saying to them: ‘‘ Hurt not the earth, neither the 


THE FOUR WINDS 173 


sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants 
of our God in their foreheads.” 

1. Let it be clearly understood then, and in the 
first place, that the four winds in this passage are 
just all those evils to which our life in this world 
continually lies on all sides open and exposed. 
For 


‘Though trouble springs not from the dust, 
Nor sorrow from the ground ; 
Yet ills on ills, by Heaven’s decree, 
In man’s estate are found. 


As sparks in close succession rise, 
So man, the child of woe, 

Is doomed to endless cares and toils 
Through all his life below.” 


Take the happiest, the most hopeful, the most 
sheltered life among us; but do not suppose that 
there is any exception there to the universal lot of 
our human kind. The storm that is predestined 
to try whether or no that man’s house is built on 
the rock or on the sand—that storm, those winds, 
may be sleeping to-day like hounds in their couch ; 
but when their Master calls for them, they will 
leap to the chase, and pant after their prey. This 
earth on which we now stand, and on which we 
build our houses, is the same earth that John saw 
surrounded with its waiting storms. You must go 
out of this world if you would build a house on 
which no storm will ever beat. 


174 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


2. The four winds, again, are the very type and 
emblem, they are the selectest type and the very 
best emblem, of all that is lawless and uncalculable, 
capricious, sudden, and unexpected. ‘“‘ The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth.” The “large charter” of the 
wind has become a standing proverb. At the 
same time, our modern meteorologists do not 
despair of yet being able to lay a law even on the 
lawless wind: they intend to discover to us its 
most secret caves; to calculate its speed and its 
strength ; to lay all its caprices and escapades under 
rule; and to tell in good time to the sailor on the 
sea and to the husbandman in the field both whence 
the wind cometh and whither it goeth. But after 
all, in all that, we slow-witted men are only learning 
in the end of the world what God and His guardian 
angels have known from the beginning. ‘“‘ When 
He uttereth His voice there is a multitude of waters 
in the heavens: He causeth vapours to ascend from 
the ends of the earth: He maketh lightnings with 
rain: He bringeth forth the wind out of His 
treasures. O Lord, my God, Thou art clothed with 
honour and with majesty: Who layeth the beams 
of His chambers in the waters: Who maketh the 
clouds His chariot: Who walketh upon the wings 
of the wind.” The storms that rush like infuriated 
battle-horses over the heads of prostrate men all 


THE FOUR WINDS 175 


cease and answer to His call. They all confess 
His hand. They all sink into silence when He but 
speaks the word. There is no caprice, there is no 
lawlessness, there is no suddenness before Him. 
He says, Blow! and it straightway becomes a storm. 
He says, Peace, be still! and there is a great 
calm. 

And so is it with the four mystical winds that 
are under the four mighty angels. Now, they 
would not waken a sleeping child ; and again, they 
rock the everlasting hills like so many blades of 
grass. And in calm and in storm alike they are at 
the command and the permission of God. Nota 
shadow falls on our threshold but God’s hand hung 
the cloud that casts it in our sky. Not a great 
wind smites our banqueting-house and makes it the 
sepulchre of our children, but it was led out of the 
wilderness under the hand of God. Is there evil 
in the city, and it has not first had to ask His per- 
mission? Has a cedar fallen in the forest, has a 
hair perished off our head without our heavenly 
Father? All which is taught us in the noble 
symbolism of the text when we are let see the 
angel-warders holding the winds in their fists so 
that they shall not wantonly, or without permission 
and command, hurt the earth, or the sea, or any 
tree. “‘ Are not five sparrows sold for a farthing ? 
And one of them shall not fall to the ground with- 
out your Father. Not one of them is forgotten 


176 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


before God. Fear ye not, therefore: ye are of 
more value than many sparrows.”’ 

3. All that is well; all that is wonderful. But 
the best of all\ that is,’ that) 1t is’ all. but» the 
wonderful means to a far more wonderful, and a 
far more blessed, end. For the four mighty angels, 
with all their gates, and all their keys, and all their 
power over wind and sea, over earth and all that 
earth contains—they are all at the command of 
that other angel who carries in his hand the seal 
of God. Hear him, then, as he ascends kindling out 
of the east. ‘“‘ Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, 
nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of 
God in their foreheads.’”’ His errand is to those 
saints of God who are still upon the earth, and 
whose sealing is to be carried on and completed 
under his special care. He is sent forth to minister 
grace, and to order and to administer providence 
to all those saints and servants of God who are being 
specially and speedily sealed for their translation 
to heaven, and for their presentation without spot 
or blemish before God in love. This angel who has 
the seal looks on all God’s saints on earth with eyes 
that see their hidden saintliness :—the true nature 
of it, the exact stage of it, and just what it still 
wants to perfect it, as well as just when and how its 
full perfection is to be accomplished. And, as the 
angel with the seal communes with and gives his 
commands to the four angels of the winds, we come. 





THE FOUR WINDS 177 


to see how grace commands and is supreme over 
providence; and how the angels of providence 
rejoice to subserve the angel of grace and of a sealed 
holiness. Earth, in this view, takes all her orders 
immediately from heaven ; and heaven again takes. 
her orders from Him who has the seven-sealed Book 
in Hishand. All earth’s gates,—her north gate and 
her south gate, her east gate and her west gate,— 
they all wait, are all opened and shut, are all shut 
and opened at the word of the angel with the seal. 
The great gateways of the earth are filled with 
hurrying feet; and again, they are silent as the 
grave, just as he signifies it is to be. Every door 
that lets in joy and sorrow on the sons of men, and 
especially on the saints and servants of God, he 
keeps the key of it. The four great watchmen 
wait for his descent and his signal more than they 
watch for the morning. 

At the same time, masterful and clothed with 
authority as this angel is, he does not say, he does 
not assume, that he seals all God’s servants in his 
own strength and in his own office alone. No; he 
takes all his four brethren along with him. He 
looks to them as much as they look to him. He 
acknowledges them; he claims them and counts 
on their co-operation. ‘‘ Till we,” he says, “ till 
we have sealed God’s servants.’ The ascending 
angel carries the seal; but the four stationary 


angels, the four storm-gate guardians, are his 
12 


178 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


assistants and his fellow-workers, and are indeed 
his indispensable forerunners. They make ready 
his sealing work for him. He comes but to gather 
up and to finish what they have begun and carried 
so far on. For we know now that these powerful 
four are they who with their four winds surround 
our lives with awaking, alarming, arresting, and 
sanctifying providence. These are they who warn 
us not to build our nest in any forest on the earth. 
These are they who speed up and down and over- 
rule our own world of tribulation. These are they 
whose blessed ministry all the saints celebrate with 
that psalmist who said that it had been very good 
for him to be afflicted. These are they whose 
ministry of trial and tribulation did so much for 
Job and for Jonah in the Old Testament, as well 
as for our Lord Himself and for all His apostles in 
the New Testament. ‘“ Hurt not the earth,” said 
the angel from the east, “till we, the angels of 
providence and of grace, have sealed the servants 
of our God in their foreheads.” 

4. But, “the seal of the living God ’’—what, 
just what is that? What is it but, so to say, the 
Royal Signet-ring of Heaven? That seal has been 
worn on the arm of the King Eternal, Immortal, 
and Invisible, ever since that day when the only 
wise God, to Whom be honour and glory for ever 
and ever, first chose a people for Himself. He set 
it then as a seal upon His heart, till all His covenant 


THE FOUR WINDS 179 


people should be gathered in and brought home in 
holiness and in love. That seal bears on its face 
an image that no earthly artificer can counterfeit. 
For its secret device is the perfect Image and like- 
ness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and its signa- 
ture is the New Covenant Name of the Father 
Himself. And that the ascending Angel has that 
seal in his hand shows us what an Angel he is, how 
much he is trusted, what a rank he holds, and on 
what an errand he is sent out. It shows, also, the 
surpassing grace that comes to that servant of 
God on whose forehead this angel sets this seal. 
For, when set on any man’s forehead, it certifies 
Heaven and Earth and Hell whose that man hence- 
forth is. ‘‘ He is Mine,” says Almighty God before 
Heaven:and Earth and Death and Hell. “I have 
loved him with an everlasting love. I have called 
him by his name and he is Mine. I have redeemed 
him. I have justified him. I have adopted and I 
have sanctified him. He is Mine. He is Mine. 
He is Mine.”’ 

And the setting of this seal on the forehead of a 
saint of God on earth is the last—the last and the 
supreme act of Divine Grace upon that saint till 
grace rises above itself and becomes glory. 

(xr) Now there are some secret legends graven on 
and suspended from the great seal of the King of 
Glory—secret legends that we should all have 
transcribed upon our hearts. And “Dear in God’s 


180 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


sight is the death of His saints ’’—is one of those 
legends: that fine legend is to be read in letters 
of deepest gold on that splendid seal. Yes; dear 
to God is that day, because He knows all that that 
day is, and is to be to Him and to His saints; and 
that day is dreadful and not dear to us just because 
we are still on the earth and not yet with John in 
heaven. For that day, like every day, has two 
sides,—an earthly side and a heavenly. The day of 
the death of one of God’s saints is only called death 
on earth. On earth,—for it is the day of their 
final deliverance ; it is the day of their full corona- 
tion; it is the first day of their deathless life in 
heaven. The last touch the sealing angel puts to 
a saint’s forehead on earth may be put amid storm 
and tempest and a great darkness. It often is. 
It always is. The angel with the seal descends to 
perfect his work on the wings of the storm-wind. 
And that wind, as if to pay its last debt to that 
saint’s house, as if to deliver its last blow to that 
saint’s awakening, and to the sorrow that has been 
his salvation—that wind makes all things rock 
and reel beneath him and around him on the day 
of his death as never before. But that is just 
because this is the last time the sealing angel is to 
descend on that saint’s house; this is the last 
service also of those four angels to this saint 
till they return to the throne to give in their 
account. 


THE FOUR WINDS 181 


And thus it is that while we are wringing our 
hands and are charging God and His guardian 
angels foolishly, He is saying to those same angels, 
Well done! and to His saints: Come up hither, 
ye blessed! Yes; dear in God’s sight is every day 
of His saints; but dear above all other days is 
the day of their last sealing on earth, and their 
“abundant entrance,’ and their unblemished 
presentation before His throne in heaven. 

(2) ‘“‘ He shall give His angels charge over thee, 
to keep thee in all thy ways ’’—that also is graven 
on the Divine Seal; and from thence that is written 
on the heart of every much-experienced saint of 
God. Yes, assuredly. Each several saint of God 
as he goes on in his life of sanctification comes 
to accumulate many such records of special pro- 
vidences, miraculous interpositions, times of storm 
that carried angels to his house on the wings of the 
wind, till his house is as well watched as John saw 
the whole earth watched. And that goes on till we 
cannot return to any house we have ever lived in, 
we cannot revisit any past period of our life, with- 
out being compelled to say—there and there and 
there He gave His angels charge over me! I saw it 
then! and ten times clearer I see it now! And, 
blessed be His name, in a thousand ways He calls 
that past to our mind, and assures us that our 
thankful mind is true and right. And that goes on, 
—the secret of the Lord increasing with them that 


182. WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


fear Him—till, behold, at every corner of our house 
we see an angel stationed every night ; and till we 
cannot come out at our closet door but we see the 
sheen of the seal in the midnight sky. 

(3) But the very foundation and substance of 
God’s seal, and the oldest and the deepest of all 
the things that are engraven upon it is this—that 
the will of God is our sanctification. And till I 
begin to see that on God’s seal, and till I begin to 
feel the imprint of that upon my forehead—all my 
life in this world is a vast maze without any mean- 
ing tome. It isa dark labyrinth in which I wander 
up and down without a clue. But when my 
sanctification begins within me—Ah! there is the 
secret thread to that whole labyrinth now! There 
is the key to the whole mystery now! There is 
something for me to live for, and, if need be, to 
suffer all my days for now! There is something 
not unworthy of the interest of angels in me and in 
my affairs now! Nay: worthy of the Lord of all 
angels Himself! I look back and see it all now. 
All God’s vast patience with me, and all His 
marvellous providences over and all about me, are 
as plain as day now! Sanctification! Sanctifica- 
tion! A sealed and an accepted sanctification! 
Sweetest of words! Most blessed of hopes! O! 
Blessed will of God with me! And blessed angels, 
both of providence and of grace, who have had 
even a ministering hand in such a sanctification as 


THE FOUR WINDS 183 


mine shall be! But, blessed far above all speech 
on earth, and above all song in heaven, that sinner, 
that saint, that servant of God, on whose sanctifica- 
tion and sealing the will of God has been from all 
Eternity set ! 





PART IIl 


IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME 


185 


oo $y) iv 





XV 
THE COMFORTS OF GOD 


“Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.’’-— 
Isa. xl. 1. 


“THE boundless exhilaration’’ of Isaiah is a 
proverb in sacred letters. There is nothing, any- 
where else in literature, sacred or profane, to com- 
pare with the hope, the joy, the rapture, the trans- 
port of Isaiah. The Book of Revelation itselfi— 
that so transcendent book—goes back, and borrows 
some of its most captivating visions, as well as 
some of its sublimest language, from the Book of 
Isaiah. The New Testament has so completely 
taken over into itself this Old Testament book, 
that it is impossible for us to read this book any 
more, simply as Isaiah wrote it. 

When we read of Babylon in Isaiah, we immedi- 
ately think of our own bondage to sin. When we 
read of Cyrus, we have already forgotten Cyrus, 
because we have seen Christ. When our students 
study ‘‘ the Servant of the Lord ”’ in Isaiah, their 
hearts turn to their Saviour, and they say to Him: 
*“Lo, now speakest Beha cg taed adn speakest no 


188 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


parable. For Thou hast in very deed been 
wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for 
our iniquities, and the Lord hath laid on Thee 
the iniquity of us all.”” And when we read in the 
eloquent prophet how the wilderness was trans- 
formed into the garden of the Lord around the 
returning exiles, it is far more wonderful, and far 
more eloquent to us,—the way the Lord is leading 
ourselves. Nor can we read Isaiah’s noble de- 
scription of his and his people’s New Jerusalem, 
without our heart melting within us to be for ever 
home in the Jerusalem which is above, which is 
free, and which is the mother of us all. 

No less than twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah’s 
great book are taken up with the comfort of the 
captives in Babylon. And large and evangelical 
as is the scope, rich and far-reaching as is the 
vision, and surpassingly eloquent as is the style of 
those twenty-seven chapters—at the same time 
every word of those chapters is spoken and written 
for the comfort of the captive people. And the 
“incomparable exhilaration’’ of those twenty- 
seven chapters is all due to this—that “ the God of 
all comfort ’’ not only gives Isaiah his commission 
of comfort, but puts the very comforts themselves, 
as well as the very words in which those comforts 
are to be described, into the prophet’s mouth. 
The God of Israel rises up to comfort His people 
Himself in this golden book. Only, He conveys 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 189 


those comforts through the golden heart and the — 
golden mouth of this greatly-gifted and greatly- 
graced prophet. So much have we of God Himself 
in this book, and so little of Isaiah—beyond his 
name and his voice—that we may take this book 
as all but the speech and the penmanship of the 
Divine Comforter Himself, carrying out His own 
command: ‘“‘ Comfort ye, comfort ye My people. 
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem ; speak to her 
heart.”’ 

Supper being ended, when Jesus knew that His 
hour was come that He should depart out of this 
world to the Father, He set Himself to comfort 
His sorrowing disciples. When Simon Peter said 
to Him, “Lord, whither goest Thou?” Jesus 
answered him: “‘ Let not your heart be troubled: 
ye believe in’ God, believe also in Me. In My 
Father's house are many mansions: I go to pre- 
pare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again and receive you to 
Myself: that where I am, there ye may be also.” 
And when Thomas raised this difficulty, “‘ Lord, 
we know not whither Thou goest; and how can 
we know the way?’ Jesus comforted Thomas 
with these great words: “‘ I am the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life.’ And when Judas raised his diffi- 
culty, ‘“‘ Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest 
Thyself to us, and not to the world?” his 
Master explained to him: “If a man love Me, he 


199 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


will keep My words; and My Father will love 
him, and We will come unto him and make Our 
abode with him.”” And then, from that, our Lord 
passed on to promise and to describe the Holy 
Ghost as “‘ Another Comforter,” whom the Father 
will send to them in answer to His prayer. And it 
is of the first importance to every New Testament 
disciple to have ever before him the very words 
in which our Lord describes and promises the Holy 
Ghost. “I will pray the Father, and He will give 
you another Comforter, that He may abide with 
you for ever. And ye know Him: for He 
dwelleth with you, and shall bem you. The Father 
will send the Comforter in My name, and He shall 
teach you all things and bring all things to your 
remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you. It 
is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if 
I depart, I will send Him to you. He shall guide 
you into all truth. He shall take of Mine and shall 
show it unto you. These things I have spoken 
unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the 
world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good 
cheer; I have overcome the world.” 

1. Now, in passing on to apply all that to our- 
selves, the first thing is to raise the question 
whether this comfort, or any part of it, belongs at 
all to us. “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, 
saith your God.” “ The world cannot receive the 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 191 


Comforter,’ says our Lord, “‘ because it seeth Him 
“not, neither knoweth Him.” The Holy Ghost is 
sent to the world indeed,—but not as a Comforter. 
“When He is come,” says our Lord, ‘“ He will 
reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and 
of judgment.’’ Now, has He so come to you? 
Has He been so received by you? Do you receive 
and accept His reproofs of sin? Do you hunger 
after the righteousness He holds up before you? 
Do you humble yourself under the judgment He 
passes on you? As you do so, and in the measure 
you do so, and at the times you do so, to that 
extent and at those times you pass over from the 
world which knoweth not the Spirit of truth, and 
you gain the discipleship to which their Master 
sends the Comforter. Has He, then, the Reprover 
and the Sanctifier, come to you, and been received 
by you? That is the first question. That is the 
previous question. Not that it need be feared that 
the world will be greedy to take to itself the com- 
forts of God’s people. It “ cannot,’ says our Lord. 
For it neither sees those comforts nor knows them. 
No more it does—when you think of it. What 
could a man of Babylon have made of the Prophecy 
of Isaiah ? Even the wisest of the men of the East 
—what could they have made of the evangelical 
prophet ? He would have been “ foolishness ’’ to 
them. They had not, as Paul would say, the mind 
of Christ. They had not had the experience of a 


192 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


true Israelite. Babylon was no banishment to 
them. Jerusalem had no attractions to them. 
Nay,—not only had Jerusalem and her prophets 
and her promises no attractions to the men of 
Babylon: there were many men of Israel who 
turned a deaf ear to the prophet’s comforts. It is 
a matter of history that multitudes of Israelites 
remained in Babylon, and would not face the 
wilderness, spite of all that Isaiah and his fellow- 
prophets could say. And so it is still. The iron 
has not sufficiently entered our hearts. The 
bondage has not sufficiently broken our hearts. 
The Holy Ghost has not sufficiently come as a 
reprover of sin and of righteousness and of 
judgment ; and as a consequence we are not pre- 
pared for Him as a Comforter. ‘‘ That the saying 
of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he 
spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and 
to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ? ”’ 
2. The first difficulty that the Holy Ghost has 
with us is to get His reproof of sin, and His con- 
viction of sin, brought home to our hearts. And 
then, that accomplished only raises another diff- 
culty—how to get His comforts spoken in our 
reproved and convicted hearts. The captives, 
whose hearts and consciences were in the Babylonian 
captivity, raised as many doubts, difficulties, 
apprehensions, and obstacles in Isaiah’s way as the 
disconsolate disciples did in their Master’s way : till 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 193 


Isaiah’s answers, till God’s answers to their guilty 
and fearful hearts have made Isaiah as good as an 
apostle of Christ, as good as a preacher of New 
Testament consolation. You all know these golden 
consolations. ‘“‘I, even I, am He that blotteth 
out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will 
not remember thy sins. I have blotted out, as a 
thick cloud, thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy 
sins: return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee. 
Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the 
earth: for I am God, and there is none else. For 
a small moment have I forsaken thee: but with 
great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath 
I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with 
everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, 
saith the Lord thy Redeemer.’’ These are God’s 
very own words to us this morning. To all of us, 
that is, who have come up to this house reproved 
and convinced of sin. “‘ Comfort ye, comfort ye 
My people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably 
to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her seventy 
years are accomplished, and that her iniquity is 
pardoned !”’ 

3. But, let this be said in the same breath with 
all that—this caution and correction—that no 
man living in any known sin is ever comforted of 
God. The Holy Ghost never yet spake one word 
of all His abounding consolations to any man so 
long as he lived in any actual sin, or in any neglect 

13 


194 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of known duty. You have that much-needed 
caution bound up into the very heart of God’s 
great name, when He proclaimed His great Name 
to Moses. ‘“‘ The Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and 
transgression and sin—but’’—and here comes this 
great correction and caution—“ will by no means 
clear the guilty.” That is to say, as long as you 
are living in any guzit, as long as your conscience 
accuses you, He will by no means clear or comfort 
you. ‘‘ He that forsaketh his sin shall find mercy ”— 
but he only. You do not really care for God’s 
mercy or His comfort either, so long as you live in 
any sin. And it is well that you do not; for you 
can have neither. Your peace will be like a river, 
when you put away your sin; but not one word 
of true peace, not one drop of true comfort, can 
you have till then. You will have to put out God’s 
eyes, and pervert His judgment, and turn His 
Throne upside down, before you can have His 
comfort with your sin. Choose which you will 
have: “If aman love Me, he will keep My words: 
and My Father will love him, and We will come 
unto him, and make Our abode with him.” Are 
you that man? Are you intending to be that 
man? And when and in what are you to begin? 
Are you from this day to keep that word of His, 
which up to this day you know you have not kept ? 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 195 


Then, from this day Jesus and His Father will come 
to your good and honest, if broken and contrite 
heart, and will make Their abode with you. And 
from this memorable day it will be said over you 
from heaven, what was said from heaven in Israel 
over all the men in Israel like you: “‘ To this man 
will I look, saith the Lord, even to him that is poor 
and of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at My 
word.” 

4. This is the rule, then, that comfort comes 
with obedience. But there are exceptions to every 
rule; and God’s rules with His people are full of 
exceptions. His people are so full of idiosyncrasy, 
non-conformity, and originality that no rule could 
possibly be laid down that would cover them all, or 
indeed, any two of them all. And hence it is that 
God has to make as many rules in His sanctification 
and comfort of His people as He has people to 
sanctify and comfort. Every new addition made 
to God’s people has a new rule made for itself. 
Heman? and Job are great favourites with the 
profounder of the Puritan case-preachers. Heman 
and Job were famous exceptions to the common 
rule that comfort comes with obedience. And 
you may possibly be a New Testament Job or 
Heman. You may, like them, have been chosen 
of God on a special platform on which God is going 
to display some deep and sovereign exception to 

4See the title of Ps. lxxxviii. 


196 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


His usual manner of dealing with His people. 
That may be so; but you will be well advised not 
to assume that too much till you have proved it 
true by a lifetime of strict and spiritual obedience. 
And then, if, after a lifetime of strict and spiritual 
obedience, you are still left without your promised 
and expected comfort—why—then you are in good 
company, and must not complain. “‘ God gives 
grace,’ says Goodwin, “in cases where He does 
not give comfort; and then, He is the God of all 
grace in a far larger extent than of all comfort: 
yea, and often He gives most grace when He gives 
least comfort. He carries on some souls—as He 
carried on Christ at His death—+.e. to the highest 
acts of obedience, whilst yet He vouchsafes no 
comfort. Witness that doleful expression of 
Christ: “My God, My God, why hast Thou for- 
saken Me ? ’—when yet He was in the highest act 
of obedience. Thus in thy temptation God will 
influence thee with grace, secretly assisting and 
strengthening thee, even when He affords thee no 
sensible comfort. Carry this home with thee,” 
adds the great preacher comfortably—*‘ Carry this 
home with thee, thou who hast for so many years 
been tossed with tempest and not comforted.” 

5. “Oh,” some of you will say in answer to all 
that—‘ you speak of exceptions, but I am an 
_ exception in nothing but in the corruption of my 
heart. How could God or man comfort a heart 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 197 


like mine? No man sees my heart, else all men 
would flee from me. And it is because God sees 
my heart that He has so forsaken me. Do not 
speak about comfort to me! I want no comfort: 
I want—if God would give it and could give it— 
I want a clean heart: that, as God is my witness, 
would be comfort enough for me. I want the 
devil and hell taken out of my heart,” you protest. 
Your only moments of comfort are not when your 
corn and wine abound, but when the devil is asleep 
for a season. ‘‘O, wretched man that I am! I 
am of all men the most miserable!’’ Yes! and 
No! You ave; and you are not. I will tell you 
a far greater misery than yours, and a far greater 
wretchedness. It is a great deal worse misery to 
be miserable and not to know it. To be poor, and 
miserable, and blind, and naked, and to think, all 
the time, that you are rich and increased with 
goods and have need of nothing. At your worst, 
that is not your misery. If to know your misery is 
any alleviation of it, then surely that alleviation 
is yours. If to know nothing but misery is any 
preparation for God’s mercy—as it is—then accord- 
ing to your own showing and out of your own 
mouth, who among us all is prepared for God’s 
mercy this day like you? There is only one 
Scripture you ever get any comfort out of. This is 
your text every morning, and you come back to it 
every night. “‘ The good that I would, I do not,” 


198 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


you say, “ but the evil which I would not, that I 
do.”’ Very,good. But, come on! Come on, and 
complete your own scripture—“ I find, then, a law 
that when I would do good, evil is present with me.” 
And come on still—“ For I delight in the law of 
God after the inward man. O wretched man!” 
you cry of your own accord, yes; but there is 
more—‘I thank God through Jesus Christ my 
Lord. There is therefore now no condemnation ”’ ; 
and ere ever you are aware, you will be swimming 
in a sea of comfort, a sea without a bottom or a 
shore. You are launched upon the eighth of the 
Romans, and into the ocean of comfort, out of 
which that great chapter is but a cup. 

6. You would let go; you would yield yourself 
up on the spot to any of God’s comforts He or His 
servants are pleased to speak to you this day—if it 
were not that you are such an atheist and scandal 
in prayer. But your conscience is so in prison 
about prayer that you feel as if you must flee from 
the Lord’s table. Bad as your heart is, and bad as 
your life has been, yet there is nothing that makes 
you feel so despicable and so castaway as your 
shameful neglect of prayer. You like to read 
books about prayer. You like to hear sermons 
about prayer. You reverence and love the men 
of prayer. But all that only makes you a greater 
beast before God. You are in positive despair 
about prayer. And yet, you know on the testi- 


THE COMFORTS OF GOD 199 


mony of thousands, and on the assurance of God’s 
word in endless places—that prayer is, of all things 
a mortal man can perform, by far the most blessed. 
How can prophet, or apostle, or the Holy Ghost 
Himself, comfort you? You refuse to be com- 
forted! The greatest and the best of comforts is 
in your own house, is every day, morning and night, 
and seven times a day, in your own heart ; and you 
will not move a hand or foot to take it. There is 
no mystery about prayer: no mystery, but its 
nearness, and its easiness, and its sureness, and 
its fruitfulness, and its supreme, immediate, and 
everlasting blessedness. Only begin to pray. 
Prayer, of all things, only needs a _ beginning. 
Begin, and it will beat you to give over. Begin, 
and you will be a man of prayer yourself before 
you know where you are,—a man of power with 
God, and not only a greatly comforted man your- 
self, but a fountainhead of comfort to many others. 
What a father you would then begin to be and what 
a mother! What a sister and what a brother! 
What a friend and what a lover! What a minister 
and what a member! For you would have a well 
of comfort springing up in your own heart; and 
out of your heart comfort would flow like a river, 
far and near round about you. Till you, even you 
would be found exclaiming with Paul: ‘“‘ God 
comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may 
be able to comfort them that are in any trouble, 


200 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- 
forted of God.’ ‘“‘ You will comfort My people,’ 
saith your God to His servants, “if you could 
prevail with them to pray.’’ We shall do our 
best, O God! Only pour out on us all, prophets 
and people, the promised spirit of prayer and 
supplication ! 

7. But the Lord’s Supper is the crown and the 
seal of all our best comforts in this life. And you 
will never be nearer the ‘‘ God of all comfort ”’ till 
you sit down with Him in heaven, than you will 
be immediately, in a few moments. “I sat,” says 
the Bride, “under His shadow with great delight, 
and His fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought 
me into His banqueting-house, and His banner over 
me was love.”’ 

‘“‘Thou art coming to a King; 
Large petitions with thee bring: 


For His grace and power are such, 
None can ever ask too much.” 


XVI 
THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET 


“Who hath believed our report ? ’’—ISA. liii. 1. 


IT was when Jerome was engaged in translating 
this chapter out of its original Hebrew into his 
western Latin, that he exclaimed in wonder and in 
praise: “‘Surely this is the chapter of a New 
Testament evangelist, rather than of an Old Testa- 
ment prophet!’ And ever since Jerome said that, 
Isaiah has been known in the Church as ‘“ The 
Evangelical Prophet.” ‘Not only many Jews,” 
says Albert Bengel, “but even atheists have 
been converted to Jesus Christ by means of this 
chapter. History records the names of some of 
them: God alone knows the names of them all.” 
And John Donne says that as “in the New Testa- 
ment we have ‘ The Gospel according to Matthew,’ 

and ‘The Gospel according to Mark,’ and ‘ The 
Gospel according to Luke,’ and ‘ The Gospel accord- 
ing to John’: so in the Old Testament we have 
“The Gospel according to Isaiah.’”’ ‘The fifty- 
third of Isaiah reads,” says Delitzsch, “as if it had 


201 


202 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


been written beneath the Cross of Calvary. This 
chapter is the most central chapter, the deepest 
and the highest chapter, in the whole of the Old 
Testament. The Holy Ghost has here excelled 
Himself,’”’ says Delitzsch. 

And indeed, this most wonderful chapter deserves 
all, and more than all, that has ever been said in 
admiration of it. The Old Testament believers cast 
their surest anchors on this Scripture. They had 
more anchorages than this; but this was the surest, 
the safest, and the most consoling anchorage of 
them all. There is nothing, indeed, like this 
chapter even in the New Testament itself: there 
is no other single scripture—in the whole of the 
Word of God—in which the sin-atoning death of 
the Son of God is set before the faith of a sinner as 
it is here. Simply nowhere else is the redeeming 
death of Christ set forth so clearly, so fully, so 
emphatically, so explicitly, so positively, so experi- 
mentally, so impossibly-to-be-disputed, and so 
impossibly-to-be-for-one-moment-doubted—as it is 
here. A sinner must have his eyes sealed up very 
close indeed, not to see his salvation here. He 
must surely have a very seared conscience, who 
does not flee to the Cross of Christ as it stands so 
open to him in this chapter. Listen, again, to the 
accumulated statements of the atonement in this 
single scripture: listen, and cast your anchor on 
every one of them, as I repeat them to you for that 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET = 2038 


purpose. ‘‘ He hath borne our griefs, and carried 
our sorrows: He was stricken, smitten of God, and 
afflicted: He was wounded for our transgressions, 
He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement 
of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes 
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray ; 
we have turned every one to his own way; and 
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 
He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He 
opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb 
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers 
is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. .. . For 
the transgression of my people was He stricken. 
. . . It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath 
put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul 
an offering for sin ...He shall bear their 
iniquities: . . . because He hath poured out His 
soul unto death; and He was numbered with the 
transgressors ; and He bare the sin of many, and 
made intercession for the transgressors.”’ 

All the other Scriptures of the Old Testament 
are written with pen and ink; but these things 
read as if they were written with the very blood of 
Christ Himself, with the sin-atoning blood of the 
Lamb of God slain for Old Testament believers, and 
New, before the foundation of the world. 

“The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 
all.”” Could any conceivable language be clearer ? 
What more, what better for us could possibly have 


9 


204. WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


been said? Nothing better: unless it is the 
margin, where it is said: “The Lord hath made 
the iniquity of us all to meet on Him.” Now, my 
brethren, though it is not too much for Almighty 
God, and His Divine Son, to take up and deal with 
the iniquity of us all, it is impossible for us to take 
up all that iniquity into our minds, and to lay it 
all upon our hearts. And it is not intended, nor 
expected, that we should do so. What we are 
called to think of and to deal with here is our own 
individual iniquity, and to think of it as taken 
off us and laid upon Jesus Christ. We shall simply 
lose ourselves, we shall simply drown ourselves, if 
we begin with the iniquity of all other men, and 
try to wade out into that ocean, and into our Lord’s 
atoning death for all that. The right way is to 
begin and end with our own iniquities, and with 
our Lord’s atoning death for us and for them. 
The right way is to read this great Scripture, as if 
it were written for, and addressed to, each single 
one of us separately and alone; and as if there 
were no other sinful man for Christ to die for in 
the whole world, but ourselves. ‘“‘ Hast thou 
believed our report ?’’—this demand is made to 
each one of us, severally and alone. “‘ Has the 
arm of the Lord been revealed to thee? Has the 
Lord made all thine iniquities to meet on His 
substituted Son?’’ The whole Atonement—in all 
its length, and breadth, and height, and depth—is 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET — 205 


far too high, and far too deep for us. It is enough 
for us to have to make sure that our own iniquities 
have all been atoned for, and that the Son of God 
has taken them all for ever away, and has given 
us His own justifying righteousness in their place. 

And as it is our own sins and iniquities that we 
are to think of when the report of the atonement is 
made to us, even so it is certain particular sins and 
transgressions of our own that we are to think of. 
We are not to attempt to think of the mass and the 
immensity of our sins, for that also is far too much 
for us. A long lifetime of sin, and then our whole 
nature steeped and soaked in sin,—what human 
mind could keep all that in memory, or could ever 
take up and feel aright the full weight and guilt 
and shame of all that? No human mind, no 
human heart could ever do so. It is absolutely 
impossible. But it is possible to take this and that 
sin, this and that transgression, and to lay it on 
our offered Surety and Substitute. ‘‘ Innumerable 
evils compass us all about,’’ and pursue us like so 
many avengers of blood. But it is not our in- 
numerable evils that we are always to deal with, 
so much as that evil, and that evil, and that other 
evil: committed at that time, and at that place, 
and against that person, God or man. It is this 
and that particular evil and special sin that we are 
to fix our eyes on, as the Lord takes it, and lays it 
on His sin-bearing Son. 


pe OF 
Ld 


206 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


And then, when we do that—how our sins horrify 
us at such times, and make us at such times to hate 
them almost as much as God Himself hates them ! 
To have to take this and that sin, in all its vileness 
and wickedness, and to have to stand and see it 
taken off ourselves, and laid on the sinless head of 
the Son of God. Oh, my brethren—why does 
that not break our hearts in pieces, never to be 
healed again? Why does that not make it im- 
possible for us ever to perpetrate that sin again ? 
Oh, the fearful dominion of sin! Oh, the unspeak- 
able deceitfulness and persistence of sin! That 
it can still survive such awful experience as that! 
And that it can still steal away our hearts from 
such a God and such a Saviour! But hard and all 
but hopeless as our hearts are—yet every time we 
do attempt to take such and such a sin and to lay 
it on Another, and on such Another—as a matter 
of fact that does do something to horrify our hearts 
at that sin, and at the thought of loading and 
defiling and crucifying the Son of God again with 
that sin. But in His mercy, God tempers and 
softens our sight of our sin, and of His Son’s death 
for our sin; else we would lose our reason at the 
awful sight. All the same—soften it as He may— 
it remains absolutely true,—as true as God is 
true; as true as Christ is true; as true as the 
Gospel is true,—that the Lord hath laid on 
Him all our iniquities, all the most abominable, 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET 207 


and the most aggravated of our iniquities and our 
transgressions. 

And then, what a cruel catalogue of our Lord’s 
sufferings for our sins, this prophet here reads home 
upon our broken hearts! “His visage, marred 
more than any man, and His form more than the 
sons of men. Stricken, smitten, wounded, bruised, 
chastised, scourged, oppressed, afflicted.”” And 
every accursed syllable of all that—‘‘for me.” 
Nothing of all that would ever have come near 
Him, but for me. All that was my desert. All 
that was the wages of my sin. But for Him, and 
His interposition, and His substitution of Himself, 
my visage would have been marred more than any 
man. But for Him, I would have been despised 
and rejected of men, and no man would ever have 
put any esteem upon me. I would have been 
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. I would 
have been wounded, and bruised, and chastised, 
and scourged. I would have had all mine iniquity 
laid on myself. I would have been oppressed and 
afflicted; I would have been bruised and put to 
grief! That, communicants, is the way for you 
and me to go through this expiation-scripture. 
That is the way for a man to examine himself and 
so to eat of that bread and drink of that cup. 
That is the way to “receive the atonement.” 
That is the way so to make Christ our sin that we 
may be made His righteousness, That is the way 


208 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


to let Him see of the travail of His soul,—that it 
has not been wholly lost and altogether thrown 
away upon us. “I, O Esaias! I, for one, have 
believed thy report! To me, for one, has the 
arm of the Lord been revealed !’’—so let us all 
say, and each man, for himself. 

Among the many amazing things of which this 
amazing chapter is full, there is nothing that arrests 
us, and overawes us, and, indeed, staggers us more 
than this—that it “‘ pleased the Lord to bruise ’’ 
His Messiah-Son. But the simple truth of God 
in this matter is this. God was so set, from ever- 
lasting, on the salvation of sinners that the most 
awful steps that had to be taken in order to work 
out that salvation are here said to have absolutely 
pleased Him. It is somewhat like our Lord’s own 
words—‘ I delight to do Thy will”: even when 
His Father’s will led Him to the garden of Geth- 
semane and the Cross of Calvary. God so loved 
the world that He gave up His only-begotten Son 
to die for the sin of the world. God could not be 
pleased with the death of His Son—in itself. No. 
But nothing has ever pleased Him more than that 
His Son should lay down His life in atonement for 
those sinners whom the Father had chosen and 
ordained to everlasting life. Paul has everything. 
And he has the Father’s indebtedness to His Son 
and His good pleasure in His death in this great 
passage: ‘‘ God hath set forth Christ Jesus to be a 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET 209 


propitiation through faith in His blood: to declare 
His righteousness, that He might be just and the 
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” It 
pleased the Lord to bruise Him, because in this way 
alone could God’s full hatred of sin be declared to 
men and angels, and at the same time God’s justice 
might be manifested in the salvation of sinners. 
Yes; “‘Esaias is very bold’’ when he says that 
“it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.”’ But in 
saying that, Esaias is not one word bolder than is 
the whole of the glorious Gospel, in its proclamation 
of God’s supremest glory in the death of Christ, and 
in the consequent salvation of sinners, and a multi- 
tude of such that no man can number. As one 
of the greatest preachers of the Gospel that ever 
lived has it: “‘ For God to deliver up His Son to 
death, and for Himself to bruise Him, and that this 
should be His good pleasure: there must have been 
some incomprehensibly vast design of glory to 
accrue therefrom and to be only attained by doing 
it: some high end, and far transcending design, 
that was to be the issue and the product of it; and 
which, as you know, was the manifestation and 
magnifying of His grace in the salvation of sinners. 
And this is surely the very highest evidence and 
argument to our faith that can possibly be given— 
that God is determined to save sinners. For what 
has been done to Christ is for ever past recalling ; 
and is not to be justified or recompensed in any 
4 


210 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


other way, than by saving many by the knowledge 
of Him—as God here speaks by the mouth of His 
prophet.” 

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He 
hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His 
soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He 
shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the 
Lord shall prosper in His hand.’’ Now this is the 
conclusion of this whole matter—for this morning : 
Does He see His seed in us? In you and in me? 
If He does, then He is “satisfied’’ for all the 
“‘ travail of His soul ’’—so far as we are concerned. 
He forgets and forgives all His sufferings when He 
sees His seed; when He sees the souls He has 
redeemed to God with His own blood, putting on 
His image, and filled with His Spirit, and continuing 
His work in this world. Now—in closing—let us 
look back into this great chapter as into a glass, 
in order to see if we can recognise any of the features 
and characteristics of Christ in ourselves,—any of 
those features and characteristics of Christ as they 
are here so impressively set forth to our faith, and 
to our love, and to our imitation. As thus: “‘ He 
is despised and rejected of men: a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief: He was despised and 
we esteemed Him not.’’ Now as to the bearing of 
all that upon us, the Apostle Peter has spoken to 
all time. And this is what he has said: “ For 
hereunto were ye called: because Christ also 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET 211 


suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye 
should follow His steps: Who, when He was 
reviled, reviled not again: when He suffered, He 
threatened not.’? Now, how do you stand in these 
matters? For, every day and every hour, God so 
orders things around some of you, and so brings 
things to bear upon some of you, that you are 
buffeted and reviled and despised and rejected— 
almost every day. And that, for this very purpose 
that at such times Christ shall see His seed in you. 
Now, does He? You know your own heart under 
all that discipline; and He knows it. Now, does 
He see in your heart at such times of temptation 
and trial a copy of His own? ‘A copy, Lord, of 
Thine.” 

Then again: you will sometimes be wounded for 
other people’s transgressions, as He was for yours. 
And “ bruised for their iniquities,’’ as He was for 
yours. Now—how about your speech or your 
silence under all that? ‘“‘He opened not His 
mouth.” How happy you are, and how much to 
be envied, if you are His seed in that also. To 
suffer injury and pain, and shame and humiliation— 
at home and abroad, and never to retaliate, or to 
let it be seen that you suffer so acutely. Happy 
communicant! the seed and the solace of Christ 
if that is so! My brethren, almost above every- 
thing else in this world, imitate Christ in His silence. 
For, ‘‘ the tongue can no man tame.”’ No man, but 


212 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the Man of Sorrows. But He can. He tamed the 
tongue in Himself, and He is taming it in you—if 
you are indeed His seed. More and more imitate 
Him, then, amid all the injuries and insults, and 
provocations, and vexations, and even annoyances, 
that are let loose upon you every day—and for 
this very end—that your Redeemer may see His 
seed in you and in your silence under injuries and 
wrongs. “* For, hereunto also are ye called.” 

“Neither was any deceit in His mouth.” Now, 
cleanse your mouth also of all duplicity and double- 
mindedness. Be sincere and simple; and in 
everything and to every man be honest and honour- 
able. Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay. 
Till the God of all truth and all integrity shall see 
His true children in you, and till the Son of God 
shall see His true seed in you. 

And, to sum up: “ He was numbered with the 
transgressors: and He bare the sin of many, and 
made intercession for the transgressors.” This is 
the crowning grace of Christ—both in Messianic 
prophecy and in its evangelical fulfilment—“ He 
made intercession for the transgressors,” and 
especially for those who had transgressed against 
Himself. Do you the same! Shut your door, and 
do the same! Make intercession for those who 
will never know it till the books are opened—that 
you may be the children of your Father which is in 
heaven; and that Christ Jesus may be the First- 


THE EVANGELICAL PROPHET 213 


born among many such brethren as you. ‘“ For 
as many as are led by the Spirit of God ’’—in such 
things as these—“ they are the sons of God. The 
Spirit also bearing witness with our Spirit, that 
we are the children of God. And, if children, then 
heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ : if 
so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also 
glorified together.” 


XVII 
THE RANSOM 


** To give His life a ransom for many.’’—Ma tt. xx. 28. 


LET us draw near this morning and join ourselves 
to our Lord when He is on His way up to the 
Passover for the last time. And let us abide near 
Him this morning till we see the end. And when 
we see the end, let us all say for ourselves what 
Paul said for himself: ‘“‘ He loved me and gave 
Himself for me.” 

1. No sooner had our Lord entered Jerusalem 
in the beginning of that week than, in His own 
words, He began “‘ to give His life a ransom.’ As 
long as His time had not yet come, our Lord took 
great care of His life. His was the most precious 
life on the face of the earth, and He took corre- 
sponding care of it. But now that the work of His 
life was finished, He began at once to give His life 
away. All the beginning and middle of that Pass- 
over week our Lord was preaching all the daytime 
in the temple—and then at night He went out and 
abode in the Mount that is called the Mount of 
Olives. All that week, our Lord preached all 

214 


THE RANSOM 215 


day and prayed all night. Now there is nothing 
so exhausting as preaching unless it is praying: 
such preaching, that is, and such praying as our 
Lord’s preaching and praying were all that Pass- 
over week. Paul in one place speaks about preach- 
ing the “terror of the Lord.” And that terrible 
word best describes our Lord’s last sermons in 
Jerusalem. It is remarkable—and there must be 
a good reason for it—that the only sermons of our 
Lord that we have anything like a full report of are 
His first sermon and His last,—His Sermon on the 
Mount and His three days of farewell sermons in 
the temple. That preacher was simply throwing 
his life away who delivered the discourses that 
Matthew has preserved in the end of his Gospel. 
He was walking straight into the jaws of death 
who stood up in the temple—especially when there 
was not standing room in its passover-porches, and 
spoke the parable of “‘ The Wicked Husbandman,”’ 
and the parable of “‘ The Marriage Feast,’”’ and the 
parable of ‘‘ The Ten Virgins,’ and the parable of 
“The Last Judgment.’”’ And then, to make it 
impossible that His meaning could be missed, He 
hurled out such bolts of judgment as these: ‘‘ Woe 
unto you, Scribes and Pharisees: hypocrites! 
Woe! Woe! Woe!’ For three whole days the 
terrible Preacher was permitted to anticipate the 
Last Day ; and no man laid hands on Him. And 
then, all night in the Mount of Olives, our Lord, 


216 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


all that week, was simply squandering away what 
remained of His life. Unless, indeed, He was in 
all that ransoming the lost lives of those preachers 
who tune their pulpits; and who, once they are 
home from their day’s work and have well dined, 
will not venture out again after either to preach 
or to pray. The Son of Man gave His life for many 
ministers, in the temple and in the garden, as well 
as on the tree. 

2. The calmness of mind and the careful delibera- 
tion with which our Lord goes about the Last Supper 
is very affecting and very impressive. The quiet 
and orderly way in which He gives his instructions 
about the Supper; the serene and stately way 
in which He performs His whole part in the Upper 
Room; the watchful solicitude He shows about 
the behaviour of the disciples both to Himself and 
to one another, while all the time His own terrible 
death was just at the door,—it melts our hearts 
to see it all. He dwells on the Supper. He lingers 
over the Supper. He lengthens it out. He takes 
it up, part after part. He looks back at Moses in 
Egypt. He looks forward to the marriage-supper 
of the Lamb. He legislates for the future of His 
ransomed Church and people. He takes the paschal 
lamb out of the Supper, and He puts Himself in its 
place. ‘‘ Take, eat, this is My body broken for you. 
This is My blood of the New Testament,”’ said the 
Lamb of God, “shed for many, for the remission of 


THE RANSOM 217 


sins: drink ye all of it. And do this till I come.” 
What a heart-melting sight! What nobleness! 
What peace! What beauty of holiness! What 
boundless love ! 

3. ““ Then cometh Jesus with them to a place 
called Gethsemane, and saith to the disciples, Sit 
ye there, while I go and pray yonder.’’ Our Lord 
is in no mood for mockery; but our hearts read 
their own bitterness into His departing words. He 
seeks out a seat for the disciples. He seeks out the 
best, the softest, and the most sheltered seat in the 
garden. He points them to the place, and He bids 
them sit down in it. He tells them to keep near 
one another, and to keep one another company. 
And before He has got to His place “‘ yonder,” they 
are all fast asleep! He has not slept for a week. 
Night after night He has spent in that same spot, 
till even Judas “‘knew the place.’’ More than 
the city watchmen for the morning He had waited 
for God in that garden all that week ; and He still 
waits. ‘‘ Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, O 
Lord. Out of the belly of hell, O Lord. Then I 
said, I am cast out of Thy sight. The waters com- 
passed me about even to the soul: the weeds were 
wrapped about my head.” And being in.an agony, 
He prayed more earnestly ; and His sweat was as 
it were great drops of blood falling to the ground. 
It was the wages of sin. It was the Lord laying 
on Him the iniquities of us all. It was—every 


218 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


‘ransomed soul knows what it was. ‘‘ Yes; it was 
my cup,’ Says every ransomed soul. ‘“‘I mingled 
‘it, I filled it, I have sometimes just tasted it. No 
wonder He loathed it. No wonder He put it away. 
No wonder He sweat blood as He drank it. For 
that cup was sin. It was the wages of my sin. It 
was full of the red wine of the wrath of God against 
me.” And when He rose off His face and left the 
trampled-down and blood-soaked winepress, He 
found the disciples still sleeping. And again our 
hearts mock at us as He says, ‘‘ Sleep on now, and 
take your rest.” 

4. Were you ever false as hell to your best friend ? 
Did you ever take your unsuspecting friend by the 
hand and say, Welcome! or Farewell? Was there 
ever a Sweet smile on your face, while there was a 
dagger under your cloak? Did envy, or ambition, 
or revenge, or some such pure and downright devil 
ever enter your heart—till you almost went out 
and hanged yourself with horror at -yourself ? 
Then thou art the man that Jesus Christ ransomed 
from the halter and from hell when He submitted 
His cheek to the kiss of the traitor. It is because 
Jesus Christ has you and so many like you among 
His disciples that He took so meekly the diabolical 
embrace of the son of perdition. ‘It was not an 
enemy that reproached me: then I could have 
borne it: neither was it he that hated me that 
did magnify himself against me: then would I 


THE RANSOM 219 


have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a 
man, mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance. 
We took sweet counsel together, and walked into 
the house of God in company. Yea, mine own 
familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat 
of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.” 
“For we ourselves were sometimes living in malice 
and envy, hateful and hating one another. But 
after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour 
toward man appeared—not by works of righteous- 
ness which we have done, but according to His 
mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration 
and the renewing of the Holy Ghost: which He shed 
on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour, 
that being justified by His grace, we should be made 
heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”’ 

5. “Then the band, and the captain and the 
officers of the Jews, took Jesus and bound Him.” 
It is a very bitter moment to a prisoner when the 
officers of justice are binding him. I have often 
thought that the pinioning before execution must 
be almost more dreadful than the very drop itself. 
And our Lord felt most acutely the shame and the 
disgrace of the prison shackles. For once He broke 
silence and spoke out and remonstrated. “‘ Be ye 
come out as against a thief? ’’ He turned upon the 
officers. He had no intention of trying to escape. 
He had come out to the garden to give Himself up. 
He had said just the moment before, ‘I am He: 


220 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


take Me; and let these go their way.” But the 
officers were under the instructions of Judas. Their 
superiors in the city had told them that they were 
to look to Judas for all their orders that night. And 
Judas had said to the officers: ‘‘ Whomsoever I 
shall kiss, that same is He: take Him and lead Him 
away safely: that same is He, hold Him fast.”’ And 
they obeyed Judas; they held Him as fast and as 
safe as their best prison-cords could hold Him. 
O officers! officers! Judas must surely know; 
but it is impossible that you can know why it is 
that your prisoner walks with you so willingly! 
Did any of you Roman officers ever hear of “ cords 
of love? ’’ Well,—it is in the cords of everlasting 
love that you keep your man so safely to-night. 
O officers! officers! if you only knew who that 
is you are leading in cords into the city! O Judas, 
Judas! What are thy thoughts? O! Better 
never to have been born ! 

6. ‘‘ And all His disciples forsook Him and fled. 
But Peter followed Him afar off, unto the high 
priest’s palace, and went in and sat with the servants 
to see the end.”’ Did you ever deny a friend ? 
Did you ever sit still and hear a friend of yours 
slandered, witnessed against by hired witnesses, 
and condemned? Did you ever sit and warm 
yourself at some man’s fire; or more likely, at 
some man’s wine; and for fear, for cowardice, or 
for the sake of the company and the good cheer 


THE RANSOM 221 


did you nod and smile and wink away your absent 
brother’s good name? Look! redeemed dastard ! 
look at thy dreadful ransom! Look at Jesus 
Christ in the hard hands, and under the hired 
tongues of His assassins—and Peter, His sworn 
friend, washing his hands of all knowledge of the 
friendless Prisoner! Look! O dog in the shape 
of aman! All their sham charges, all their lying 
witnesses, all their judicial insults and brutalities 
are clean forgotten by Peter’s Master! He does 
not hear what they are saying, and He does not 
care. A loud voice out in the porch has stabbed 
our Lord’s heart to death. “‘ I know not the Man! 
I never saw Him till to-night!’’ With oaths and 
with curses above all the babel—Peter’s loud voice 
rolls in on his Master: ““I know not the Man!” 
And the cock crew. And the Lord turned and 
looked upon Peter. And Peter went out and wept 
bitterly. And as the fine legend has it: Peter 
never heard a cock crow, day nor night, all his 
after days, that he did not remember the passover- 
porch of Caiaphas the High Priest that year in 
Jerusalem ! 

7. You have heard sometimes about hell being 
let loose. Yes, but hear this. Come to Caiaphas’ 
palace on the passover night, and look at this. 
“Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted Him : 
they blindfolded Him and then they smote Him 
with the palms of their hands, saying : Prophesy to 


222 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


us, Thou Christ, who is it that smote Thee? And 
they stripped Him, and put on Him a scarlet robe. 
| And when they had platted a crown of thorns ”— 
I wonder in what sluggard’s garden it grew !— 
“they put it upon His head, and a reed in His 
right hand; and they bowed the knee before Him 
and mocked Him, saying: Hail! King of the Jews! 
And they spit upon Him again, and took the reed 
out of His hand, and smote Him upon the head. 
Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. After 
which they brought Jesus forth wearing the crown 
of thorns and the purple robe. And when the 
Chief Priests saw Jesus, they cried out, Crucify 
Him! crucify Him! Then Pilate delivered Him 
to them to be crucified.”” My brethren,—these are 
dreadful, most dreadful, things. And all the time, 
God Almighty, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, 
restrained Himself; He held Himself in, and sat 
as still as a stone, seeing and hearing all that. The 
arrest, the trial, the buffeting, the spitting, the 
jesting and the Jjeering, the bloody scourging, the 
crown of thorns, the reed, and the purple robe— 
Why? In the name of amazement, why did the 
Judge of all the earth sit still and see all that said 
and done? Do you know what made Him sit still? 
Did you ever think about it? And would you 
like to be told how it could be? God Almighty, 
my brethren, not only sat still, but He ordained 
‘it all; and His Son endured it all,—in order to take 


THE RANSOM 223 


away sin. In order to take away the curse of sin, 
to take away the very existence of sin for ever. 
You will find the explanation of that terrible 
night’s work, and of the still more terrible morning 
just about to dawn,—you will find the explanation, 
the justification, and the complete key to it all im 
your own heart. 

Did you ever see yourself to be such a despicable 
creature that you wondered why all men did not 
spit upon you? Did you ever wonder that, not 
friendship and family life only, but very human 
society itself, did not dissolve, and fall in pieces, 
such is the meanness, the despicableness, the 
duplicity, the selfishness, the cruelty, and the 
diabolical wickedness of the human heart—but 
above all human hearts, of yours? You will 
understand the spitting-scene that night when 
God lets you see your own heart. There was no 
surplus shame ; there was no scorn too much: the 
contumely was not one iota overdone that night. 
There was no unnecessary disgrace poured on 
Christ that night. They are in every congrega- 
tion, at every Communion Table, and they are 
the salt and the ornament of it, who say as they 
sit down at the Table—He hid not His face 
from shame and from spitting for me! He loved 
me in my sin and my shame, and He gave Himself 
for me ! 

8. If all that will not melt your heart of stone, 


224 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


try the next thing that Pilate and his devils did. 
For Pilate scourged Him. I will leave the scourg- 
ing to yourselves to picture, and to ask, What is 
scourging ? Who was it that was that morning 
scourged ? And why was He scourged being 
innocent ? And the crown of thorns, and all the 
awful scene to the end! O that mine head were 
waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears ! 

9g. But come out to Calvary at nine o’clock that 
morning if you would be absolutely glutted with 
sorrow and with love. All the shame, all the 
scorn, all the horror, all the agony due to our sin, 
and undertaken by our Surety—it all met on the 
Cross. The Cross was the vilest, the cruellest, the 
most disgraceful, the most diabolical instrument 
of execution that ever hell had invented and set 
up on earth. Stand back and let the chiefest 
sinner in this house come forward. Give him the 
best place. Whoever sees the crucifixion, let him 
see it. Look, sinner, and see. They lay down 
the Cross on the ground. They then take the cords 
off our Lord’s pinioned arms, and the painted 
board off His breast. They then lay Him down 
on His back on the Cross; they stretch out His 
arms along the arms of the Cross. They then open 
out His hands; and with a hammer they drive a 
great nail of iron through His right hand with the 
blood spurting up in their faces; and another 
through His left hand, and another through His feet, 


THE RANSOM 225 


placed the one above the other to save the nails. 
Five or six strong soldiers then lift up the Cross 
with its trembling, bleeding Burden, and sink it 
down with a dash into the stone socket, set in the 
earth, till all His bones are out of jomt. And 
“They know not what they do!” is all He says. 
No; they know not, but the chief of sinners now 
looking on, he knows. Paul knew: “ He loved 
me,” said Paul, “and gave Himself for me.” 
Cowper knew. 
“ There is 2 fountam filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; 
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
Lose all their guilty stains.” 

We often pray that God would “ make the bed” 
of His dying saints; and He does it. But that 
was the death-bed God made for His dying Son! 

But all that, after all, was but the outer porch 
of death to our Lord. Gethsemane and Caiaphas 
and Pilate and Herod’s palace were but the outer 
court of the temple. The Cross wasthe altar; and 
* the sacrifice only began to be fully offered about 
the sixth hour when there was darkness over all 
the earth till the ninth hour. It passeth all under- 
standing, and all the power of tongue and pen, 
what the Son of God suffered in body and in soul, 
during those three dark and silent hours. Only at 
the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “ My 
God, My God: why hast Thou forsaken Me?” 

15 


226 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


And some time after, ‘‘ It is finished,’ when He 
bowed His head and gave up the ghost. 


““?Tis finished—was His latest voice: 
These sacred accents o’er, 
He bowed His head, gave up the ghost, 
And suffered pain no more. 


’Tis finished : The Messiah dies 
For sins, but not His own: 

The great redemption is complete 
And Satan’s power o’erthrown.” 


‘So, after He had taken His garments and was set 
down again, He said unto them: Know ye what I 
have done to you?” 

Yea, Lord. Thou hast given Thy life a ransom 
for many. Thou hast loved me and given Thyself 
for me ! 


“IT am not worthy, holy Lord, 
That Thou shouldst come to me; 
Speak but the word; one gracious word 
Can set the sinner free. 


I am not worthy ; cold and bare 
The lodging of my soul ; 

How canst Thou deign to enter there? 
Speak, Lord! and make me whole. 


I am not worthy ; yet, my God, 
How can I say Thee nay,— 

Thee, Who didst give Thy flesh and blood 
My ransom price to pay? 


O come, in this sweet morning hour 
Feed me with food Divine; 

And fill with all Thy love and power 
This worthless heart of mine.” 


XVIII 
CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 


**T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and 
gave Himself for me.’’—GAL, il. 20, 


WHat is this that Paul says: “‘I am crucified 
with Christ ’’? What does the Apostle really 
mean? In what sane and solid sense does he use 
these hitherto unheard-of words? Saul of Tarsus, 
we have his own word for it, had never seen Christ, 
nor His Cross either. He had not been in 
Gethsemane with Christ like Peter, nor on Calvary 
with Him like John. The two thieves might have 
said, ‘‘ We were crucified with Christ,’’ but how 
could Saul of Tarsus say it? For he was still at 
home in his own country; he was only as yet an 
aspirant to Gamaliel’s school when Christ was 
crucified ; and the crucifixion of Christ was long 
past before Saul had set a foot in the City of the 
Crucifixion. In what sense then can he say, and 
say it so often and so boldly, “‘I am crucified with 
Christ’??? My brethren, he says it because he 


227 


228 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


believes it; he says it because he has experienced 
it, and because he is sure of it, as sure of it as he is 
sure that he is alive. Paul was not only the greatest 
preacher of the Cross that ever lived; he was that 
because he was more than that, and better than 
that; for he was the greatest and best believer 
the doctrine of the Cross ever had. Peter and 
John might hesitate and hedge in preaching fully 
and freely the Cross of Christ, and all the doctrines 
of grace that depend upon it ; they might dissemble 
and dissimulate for fear of them that were of the 
circumcision, but Paul never. He knew what he 
said, and he meant it down to the very bottom, all 
that he said. He said it; and he shook them that 
seemed to be pillars in Jerusalem by the way he 
said it. “I am crucified with Christ ... and 
though an angel from heaven were to preach any 
other Gospel than the Gospel of a believing sinner’s 
crucifixion with Christ, let him be accursed. For 
I certify you, brethren, that my Gospel is not after 
man. For I neither received it of man, neither was 
I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 
What, then, is this Gospel that Paul so immedi- 
ately learned, and so fully and so faithfully preached ? 
What is the Gospel of the Cross, and of a sinner’s 
crucifixion with Christ upon the Cross? No man 
need misunderstand or be ignorant of the Apostle’s 
central doctrine if he wishes to understand it, and 
takes any trouble to understand it. For he makes 


CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 229 


it quite plain in every Epistle of his. He preaches 
nothing else. He has nothing else to preach. 
Another Gospel is not another. There is no other 
Gospel. It is to the Cross Paul is leading up in all 
his teaching about the law of God, and about the 
nature and estate of man; and it is from the same 
Cross he leads his readers down again when he 
writes of the new life, the peace, the joy, the strength, 
the blessedness of all those who, like himself, have 
been crucified with Christ. And all up and down 
his splendid Epistles he throws in those glorious 
glimpses of his own experiences which make all his 
Epistles so everyday-like and experimental, amid 
all their sweep and magnificence, and amid all their 
height and depth. The seventh of Romans, the 
third of Philippians, the whole of the Corinthians 
and the Galatians, are full of Christ and His Cross ; 
and, at the same time, they are full of Paul and his 
crucifixion with Christ, and his consequent “life 
unto God.’”’ And in this text that autobiographic 
Gospel of Paul comes to its most condensed and 
most compacted expression. 

Paul’s first experience of the law of God was a 
terrible experience. He tells the tragical story to 
the Roman believers, to enforce upon them the 
necessity, sweetness, and blessedness of the Cross. 
Like a fierce accuser, like a dreadful judge, like a 
deadly executioner the law of God all at once fell 
upon Paul, fell upon him and haled him to prison 


230 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and death and judgment just as he had been wont 
to hale the disciples of Christ. But, behold, just 
as the executioner’s axe was lifted up against Paul, 
God Himself interposed and said: “‘ Save: I have 
found a ransom.” “God,” said Paul, speaking of 
that time, ‘‘ God revealed His Son in me,” and 
revealed Him on His Cross. 

And though Christ had been crucified long before 
on Calvary, yet Paul saw Him “evidently set 
forth ’’ during those three days in Damascus. For 
three days the mystery of the Cross was being 
opened to Paul; and I think it likely to certainty 
that Paul during those three days went down deeper 
into the mystery of Redemption than any mortal 
man had ever done before, or has ever done since. 
No man can come near that mystery and live: the 
man Christ Jesus died as He entered into it; and 
while Paul was having it revealed somewhat unto 
him he lay as good as dead. He was three days 
without sight, and did neither eat nor drink. But 
during those three dead days he had sights given 
him to see, and meat given him to eat, that the 
Damascus world around him knew not of. He was 
like those mysterious beings in heaven who are 
“full of eyes within ’’; and with his deep inward 
eyes Paul saw, as he lay at the mouth of hell,—he 
saw, I say, that which he was brought up from hell, 
and taken up into heaven, that he might fully and 
fearlessly preach. He saw Jesus Christ, the Son of 


CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 231 


God, upon the Cross; and he saw Him there made 
sin for him, that he might be made the righteousness 
of Godin Him. Nor did Paul merely see that Cross, | 
and lie three days and three nights looking at it. 
No. Paul was more than a spectator and a student 
of the Cross of Christ. Paul was lifted up upon 
the Cross and was himself crucified with Christ. 
Whether in the body, or out of the body, Paul 
could never tell; but ere ever he was aware, he 
was lifted up and lost to law and life and all things 
upon that awful, that wondrous, that glorious 
Cross. The last thing he remembered was his 
being lifted up upon that Cross. He did not re- 
member dying; he did not remember being dead : 
the last thing he remembered was, with an awful 
boldness, laying and leaving his conscience of sin 
on the thorn-crowned head of the crucified One. 
And in that dying act Paul’s whole life—his guilt, 
his condemnation, his curse, his very existence— 
was all drunk up by that Cross. Paul was as if he 
had never been born during those three terrible 
days. ‘After those days were over there arose from 
the earth on which Paul had lain, there came down 
from the Cross on which Paul was crucified, a man, 
a form of a man, in some outward respect not 
unlike Paul; but it was not the former Paul at all. 
Those Damascus disciples he had come to persecute 
trembled when they saw Paul, as they thought, 
on their streets and in their synagogue, but there 


232 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


was no cause: the Paul they had heard of was dead, 
and his world would see him no more. He was 
dead, and his bones were scattered at the grave’s 
mouth. So effectually, so completely, so utterly 
did Paul die on the Cross with Christ. Now, do 
not delude yourselves, and say that this was all 
an imagination, Paul’s powerful and evangelical 
imagination. No. All this is as real as life and 
death are real; as law and justice, judgment and 
eternity, God and Christ are real. Paul’s unreal 
and imagined life was when he was yet at Gamaliel’s 
school, and on the road to Damascus. After he fell 
from his horse he came to himself; he became sane 
and wise for the first time; and this earth has 
never seen a saner, wiser, nobler man than Paul 
the Apostle who was crucified with Christ. 

Only, let Luther utter a caution to us here. And 
let him utter his caution out of that book of which 
John Bunyan said that he preferred it before all the 
books he had ever seen as most fit for a wounded 
conscience. ‘‘ Paul,’ says Luther, commenting on 
this very text, ‘‘ Paul speaks not here of crucifying 
by imitation or example, for to follow the example 
of Christ is also to be crucified with Him. This 
crucifying is not that of which Peter speaks, that 
Christ left us an example that we should follow in 
his steps. But Paul speaketh here of that high 
crucifying, whereby sin, and the devil, and death 
are crucified in Christ, and not in me. Here Christ 


eee 


CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 233 


doth all Himself alone. But I, believing in Christ, 
am by faith also crucified with Christ, so that sin, 
and death, and the devil, are all crucified and dead 
unto me.”’ In Bunyan’s day the books that taught 
this doctrine were like to fall to pieces if one did but 
turn them over! Such books were then the meat 
and drink of heroes ; they were the consolation and 
the strength of saints. 

“T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I 
live.” ‘“‘ This is a great mystery even to myself,’ 
says Paul, “ but I will tell you how it has been 
fulfilled in me. When the law of God came home 
to me I saw that I wasa dead man. I saw that the 
wages of sin like mine was death. But just then 
it was that God in His grace to me revealed His 
Son in me. Revealed Him in me a very mystery of 
godliness ; revealed Him as made sin, as crucified 
for sin, and thus as the Ransom and Redeemer of my 
soul. Had I died for my own sin, which I was just 
about to do, I had died for ever: I had died the 
first and the second death. But dying in and with 
Christ, I both died and yet lived. One with Him 
in His death, I began again to live in His resurrec- 
tion life. I awoke off and after the Cross, and found 
myself a new creature: old things had passed away, 
and all things had become new. I am still dead 
to some things,—dead and never to see resurrection. 
I am dead to the law, and the law is dead to me. 
The law still sometimes looks at me as if it knew me, 


234 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and had something against me, and was about to 
bring up something against me; but after a time 
it only looks at me and passes by me. At such 
moments I tremble to my very heart; but at such 
moments God again reveals His Son in me, and I 
am enabled to say: Why art thou disquieted in me, 
O my soul? thou and I are crucified with Christ! 

““ Nevertheless I live. I live, I say, yet I so live 
that it is not I that live, but rather it is Christ that 
liveth in me. In some ways I am the same man 
I was before I was crucified with Christ, and in 
some ways I am not. In some not unimportant 
ways I am the same man, and in some more im- 
portant ways I am not. My hands and my feet 
are the same hands and feet I had before I was 
crucified with Christ; and yet even they are not 
quite the same, for they henceforth bear in them 
the marks of the Lord Jesus. The outward man is 
much the same; but the inward man has had a 
wonderful experience. I was a dead man, a mere 
corpse and carcass of a man, when the Lord Jesus 
came to me, and breathed His own life into me, 
and said unto me, Saul, Saul, receive thou the Holy 
Ghost! And I arose and stood upon my feet a 
living man. I lived, yet not I, but at that moment 
Christ lived in me.”’ 

The next clause is just a repetition, an explanation, 
and an expansion of what he has already said: 
“* The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the 


CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 235 


faith of the Son of God.” “‘ The life which I now 
live in the flesh’ just means this life you see me 
live among you, this life of Paul upon the earth, 
and among the churches, this life of continually 
travelling about, now east and now west, alter- 
nately preaching and tent-making, establishing 
Churches and writing Epistles. Beneath all that, 
and behind all that, there lies and works in me this 
great Gospel mystery of life and death, crucifixion 
and resurrection, justification and sanctification. 
I bear about with me daily, in doing all this, the 
dying of the Lord Jesus; and the life of Jesus is, 
at the same time, I trust, somewhat made manifest 
in my mortal body. For this life I now live in the 
flesh and on the earth, and till I go to be with Christ 
which is far better,—this present life I live by faith 
in the Son of God. My life is not led in obedience 
to the law: the law and I are for ever done with 
one another. I have said in every Epistle of mine 
that I am dead to the law; and in this matter I 
do not write one thing, and live another. I do 
not build again the things I destroyed. Let this 
be known then as the first article of my creed, and 
not more my creed than my practice. I, Paul, am 
dead to the law, and the law to me. So much so 
that even where I seem to you to obey and not to 
break the law, it is not the law I obey at all, for I 
am dead to it. If obedience to the law comes 
about by my faith in Christ, good and well. But 


236 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the law I am under, and the law I obey, is the law 
and life of Jesus Christ. Holiness itself, complete 
and spotless holiness, would not win me back to the 
law, or reconcile me to its dominion, or authority, 
or rewards. I would not have holiness and Eternal 
Life by the law even if it were offered me. I have 
suffered too much from the law ever again to trust it : 
no law forme any more! Christ, and Christ alone, 
is lawgiver and righteousness, power and truth, 
strength and salvation, temporal and eternal life 
to me! He is “made of God to me wisdom, and 
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”’ 
I am complete in Him, and the law will never more 
find me among its disciples, its devotees, or its 
debtors. For IJ, through the law, am dead to the 
law, that I might live unto God !—unto God, by 
faith in His Son,—His Son, I say, Who loved me 
and gave Himself for me. 

The law never loved me, nor gave a hair of its 
head for me. Even when I obeyed it above many 
my equals in my own nation, all the time it never 
loved me. And then, when I, in its least command- 
ment, inadvertently and unconsciously broke it, 
it turned upon me with its bowels of brass and its 
flaming sword. But, O the depth of the grace of 
God! I see now that the Son of God loved me even 
when I was dead in trespasses and sins; and I now 
love Him because He first loved me. And if you 
speak of commandments and of obedience and of the 


CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 237 


law, I will keep all His commandments and all His 
law, and obey Him, because He first loved me and 
gave Himself for me. I love Him now, and He 
knows it; but He loved me first: He was before- 
hand with His love. It was His part and privilege 
to love me first. He was the Son and He loved me, 
and revealed to me the age and the depth and the 
strength of His love, and by all that He carried my 
heart captive, and keeps it captive in a willing, 
a holy, and an everlasting captivity. Me! Ay, 
me! ‘‘ Me,—He loved me,” says Paul. Paul does 
not grudge or deny or forget the love of Christ to 
Peter, or James, or John, or the Galatian believers. 
At another time he will write to them about that, 
and will powerfully commend the love of Christ to 
their hearts; but what he has before him to-day 
is this that Christ loved him, loved Paul himself— 
yes, Paul himself. For the time Paul takes the 
whole of Christ’s love to himself, the whole of 
Christ’s heart, the whole of His Cross, the whole 
of His atoning death, the whole of His blood, and 
the whole of His Righteousness. 

“He loved me and gave Himself for me.’’ Paul 
is back again in a moment at the Cross of Christ. 
The mere mention of Christ’s love to Paul brings 
back the thought of his sin with a rush of darkness 
upon his heart, and a rush of blood to his cheek ; 
and before he can finish the verse, he has to go back 
to the Cross of Christ, and finish it there. He gave 


238 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Himself for me, says Paul,—for me and for my sins. 
Not for sin, not for the sin of the world, but for the 
sin of Paul. For the sin that made Paul all his 
days the chief of sinners, and kept him all his days 
the least of all saints :—for that sin that was the 
thorn of Satan in his flesh, and the sword of God 
in his bones, and the sting of death as often as he 
thought of death—for me and for my sins. And 
then this great verse returns upon itself, returns 
upon the Cross, and is locked into a golden chain 
of salvation, holding Christ and Paul in one bundle 
of life for ever :—one Cross, one Crucifixion, one 
Blood, one Righteousness, one Death, one Life, one 
Father, and one everlasting Home with Him. “I 
am crucified with Christ, . . . Who loved me, and 
gave Himself for me.”’ 

Now, what bearing has all this on our circum- 
stances and prospects here to-day ? Much bearing, 
my brethren: in many ways, and in this way. 
For one thing—the law will be sure to cross over 
and intrude itself into the province of grace this 
day. The law will thrust itself into many an evil 
conscience this day. It will stand with its flaming 
sword at the door of the table to-day, and will say 
to some of you: What dost thou here? Thou art 
a sinner. What hast thou to do to take God’s 
covenant into thy mouth? Take care, it will say, 
lest God strike thee dead while yet the cup is in 
thy unclean hand! What dost thou here, thou 





CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST 239 


chief of sinners? And it will fling in thy face 
some of thy worst sins, and will defy thee to come 
to the table. 

Now what, in that case, are you to do? Do 
you know what to do? Hast thou learned of 
Paul what to do at such a solemn moment? I will 
tell thee what to do. Have thy New Testament 
open at this text. Place thy finger upon this text, 
and take heart and say: All thou sayest about me, 
O accusing law, is all true. But I come here this 
day on another title and token than thou canst 
either give me, or take away from me. I come here 
into His house on the token and invitation and 
command of Jesus Christ. I come because He said: 
If ye love Me, this do in remembrance of Me. And 
I will not go back till He turns me back Himself. 
Nay, though He seemed to turn me back, I would 
not believe my eyes. Though He said, “ Friend, 
how camest thou hither?” though He said, “ Let 
the children first be filled’’; and even though He 
said, ‘‘ Bind him hand and foot ’’—while they so 
bind me I will still say: “‘ Just and true are Thy 
ways, Thou King of Saints; but Thou knowest all 
things, and Thou knowest that I love Thee!” Say 
that: I have told thee what to say. 


XIX 
TO THE UTTERMOST 


** Able to save to the uttermost.’’—HEB. vii. 25. 


“THE uttermost’’ is the strongest and the ex- 
tremest word in all the world. There cannot be 
anything beyond the uttermost. The uttermost 
is situated on the very extremest rim, and on the 
very outmost edge, of all existing things. All 
existence absolutely ends, and comes to its ever- 
lasting limit, when it comes to its uttermost. 
Beyond the uttermost, blank annihilation and sheer 
nothingness alone exist. We may labour the 
thought, and we may repeat and multiply the word, 
till we are wearied; but after we have done all, 
we must always end with this,—that the uttermost 
is just the uttermost; and beyond the uttermost, 
neither the experience of man can pass, nor the 
imagination of man can picture. 

Now, as there is something that is the very 
uttermost in the world of time, and as there is 
something that is the very uttermost in the world 
of space, so there is something that is the very 

249 





TO THE UTTERMOST 241 


uttermost in the world of sin and in the world of 
salvation. It is not given to any mortal man to 
know when the uttermost moment of time is to come. 
“ Of that day, and that hour, knoweth no man: 
no, not the angels which are in heaven: neither 
the Son, but the Father.”” And as for the uttermost 
point of space, some men of science are so perplexed 
with it as to think that space must be absolutely 
infinite, like its Maker. 

And no more does any man know what is the 
uttermost limit of sin and misery. Who is the 
uttermost of all sinners ?—-who can tell? But that 
there is such a sinner somewhere, still sinning on 
earth, or saved in heaven, or suffering in hell; and 
that Almighty God knows that sinner, and knows 
all about him,—all that is quite certain. There is 
something in that sinner’s case, there has been 
something in that sinner’s career, that conclusively 
stamps him as the very uttermost of all sinners 
anywhere to be found. In God’s sight, and in 
God’s judgment, there is some sinner somewhere, 
who bears away the palm. 

“‘ All have sinned and come short of the glory 
of God.” But there are great differences in the 
length to which sinners have gone in their sins. 
** All sims are in all,” said the Stoics; “ but all 
sins have not come to the light in all.” There is 
no sin so sinful but that any sinner might have 
committed it. At the same time, and as a matter 

16 


242 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of fact, some sinners far outstrip other sinners, 
and leave them quite out of sight. “Are all 
transgressions of the law equally heinous?’ No. 
By no means. ‘‘ Some sins in themselves, and by 
reason of several aggravations, are more heinous 
in the sight of God than others.’ Now, it is the 
“ageravations’’ of our sins that carry us away past 
all other sinners, and make us the very uttermost 
of all sinners. And thus it is that the uttermost 
sinner is not at all to be looked for where we would 
first think of looking for him. We speak of 
Christendom, and of heathendom. And we would 
naturally look for the chief of sinners among the 
nations that know not God. But he is not to be 
found where we would naturally look for him. 
Not at all. ‘‘ Circumstances,” says a great experi- 
mental preacher, ‘‘ lie far heavier on the soul than 
the sin itself.”” And the circumstances of a sinner 
in a Christian land lie far heavier on his conscience, 
and stand far blacker against him in the book of 
judgment, than if he had lived and died in a heathen 
land. This is how a deeply exercised saint used to 
examine himself as to the circumstances and the 
ageravations of his sins. ‘‘ My age,’’ he used to 
say, ‘“and my office? My place of love, and 
~honour, and trust, in the family, and in the Church ? 
The time and the occasion of my sin? The true 
name of my sin, if it were to be proclaimed from 
the housetop? The contempt and the defiance of 





TO THE UTTERMOST 243 


God revealed in my sin? Done once only? or 
done often? and done presumptuously, and done 
insultingly, and after frequent forgiveness ?’’ And 
so on, through a whole world of circumstances and 
ageravations. Yes; it is the circumstances and 
the accompaniments of sin that so blacken the 
book of God, and so exasperate and horrify the 
awakened conscience of the sinner. 

And thus it is that the very uttermost sinner in 
all this city this morning is to be looked for in some 
of its congregations, rather than in any of its slums 
or in any of its prisons. Those outcast creatures 
that fill our sunken places, our prisons, and our 
penal settlements, may well have committed 
crimes that we have never had any temptation to 
commit. But by no possibility can they be guilty 
of such sins, and such heinous aggravations of sins, 
as some of us are guilty of. They never had the 
thousandth part of our advantages and oppor-. 
tunities. And it is advantage and opportunity 
that so aggravate sin, and so incriminate the soul. 
I should not wonder then that the very uttermost 
sinner in all this city this morning is sitting in this 
house at this moment, and is consenting to my 
words about him with his whole heart. It is quite 
possible, and there are some good grounds for 
believing it, that there is some man here on whom 
privilege upon privilege has been heaped, and 
opportunity upon opportunity, and grace upon 


244 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


grace, and all conceivable kinds of blessing—both 
temporal and spiritual—and yet he has sinned in 
the teeth of all that till he is the very uttermost 
sinner in all this city. And till it may very well be 
that what is so much mere hypothesis, and im- 
agination, and indeed extravagance, to all other 
men now listening to his case, is the most un- 
deniable truth, and the most dreadful truth to him. 
Ay—and it may very well be that, under the hand 
of the Holy Ghost, he may be seeing at this moment 
how near he now is to the last precipice of all, 
how near he now is to that black line of reproba- 
tion beyond which there is nothing but the bottom- 
less pit. But he is still here. He has not yet 
crossed the black line. He has not yet fallen head- 
long into that horrible pit. “‘Save from going 
down to the pit! For I have found a ransom.” 
“Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him. 
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he 
was lost, and is found! ”’ 

But that is not all. Would God it were all. But 
it is not all, by a long way. For, over and above 
the outward world of actual and aggravated sin, 
there is the far more awful world of secret sinful- 
ness, a whole world of inward wickedness that far 
surpasses all our powers of self-examination. And 
here also, there must be some saint of God, some- 
where,—either in grace or in glory, either on earth 
or in heaven,—who had, or who has, in himself, 


= 7 


ee ne 





TO THE UTTERMOST 24E 


the very uttermost of “indwelling sin.’”’ Who, I 
wonder, was he? Or, if he is now alive, who is he ? 
Was it David who was wont to cry that there was 
“no rest in his bones because of his sin’? And 
again, that his “‘ loins were filled with a loathsome 
disease’’? And again, that he was “‘shapen in 
iniquity’? Or was it Isaiah? ‘‘ Woe is me, for 
I am undone!” Or was it Daniel when his 
““comeliness was turned to corruption’’? Or was 
it the Apostle Paul, whose seventh chapter is such an 
outburst of unparalleled agony ? Or was it Luther ? 
“When a man like me,” says the Reformer, ‘‘ comes 
to know the plague of his own heart, he is not 
miserable only, he is absolute misery itself.’’ Or 
was it Samuel Rutherford, who used to say: 
“When I look at the sinfulness of my own heart, 
my salvation is to me my Saviour’s greatest miracle. 
He has accomplished nothing like my salvation” ? 
Or was it Jacob Behmen, the uttermost of God’s 
unsanctified saints, when he wrote: ‘“‘ Do not mis- 
take me, for my heart is as full of malice sometimes 
as it can hold’’? ‘“ Begone!”’ shouted Philip Neri 
to those who spoke to his praise—‘‘ Begone! for I 
am good for nothing but to think and to do evil! ”’ 
“‘T am made of sin,’ sobbed Bishop Andrewes, till 
his private prayer-book was all but undecipherable 
to his literary executors because of its author’s 
sweat and tears. “It has often appeared to me,” 
said the seraphic Jonathan Edwards, “ that if God 


246 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


were to mark my heart iniquity against me, my bed 
would be in hell.’”? But time would fail me to tell 
you the half of the agonising cries that I hear going 
up to heaven from the utmost corner of the land. 

Now, which of all these was the ‘“‘ uttermost ”’ 
sufferer because of his indwelling sin—who shall 
say ?>—or whether it was any of those sufferers, or 
whether that greatest sufferer may not be some one 
of ourselves. Who can tell? It is quite possible; 
and the day will declare. For “‘ the secret of the 
Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show 
them His holy covenant.” 

We cannot be absolutely sure till we see them with 
our own eyes in heaven; but I think I am quite 
safe in saying that their Saviour has saved all those 
great sinners by this time, and that to “ the utter- 
most.’”’ He has saved them from the uttermost of 
actual sin, and of indwelling sinfulness, and to the 
uttermost of holiness and of blessedness. I say, 
“the uttermost of holiness and of blessedness.’’ 
For it is only those who have known in themselves 
the very “uttermost ’’ of actual and indwelling 
sin, and all the shame and all the pain of it, who 
can by any possibility attain to the “ uttermost ”’ 
possession and enjoyment of true holiness, and the 
full blessedness of heaven. And there is a real 
fitness and fairness in that. ‘‘ Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: 
for they shall be filled.” And again: ‘“‘ Him that 


TO THE UTTERMOST 247 


overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My 
God, and he shall go no more out. And I will write 
upon him the name of My God, and the name of the 
city of My God; and I will write upon him My new 
name.” 

The builder of a temple, who spares no expense, 
will sometimes bring his pillars from the very ends 
of the earth. Wherever he hears of a rock with 
rich enough veins of colour in it, and which is, at 
the same time, capable of taking on the finest finish, 
which is able to bear all his carving-tools, and to 
receive all his intended polish and resplendence— 
at any cost, he will bring home such stones, and will 
with them rear a long vista of such pillars; till his 
temple is a perfect vision and a praise of all kinds 
of beauty. And something like that, says “ He 
that is holy, He that is true,” will it be in the 
heavenly temple. It is not by any means any and 
every stone that will take on all that is in the 
Master-Builder’s mind. It is not every pillar that 
will carry all His Father’s name, and all His own 
new name. And thus it is that wherever the 
Heavenly Builder finds such a possible “ pillar,”’ 
even if it is in the “ utmost corner of the land,” 
at any price He will purchase it for His great design, 
and will not leave off working on it, till He has set 
it, and in its proper place, in His heavenly temple. 

And then, when, at the end of this world, that 
heavenly temple is at last finished—what a vision 


248 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


of strength and of beauty it will be! And sup- 
ported and adorned with what a forest of dear- 
bought and far-borne pillars! And every pillar 
of them all written all over with the Builder’s 
new name, and with His Father’s name. 

But, ‘‘ What is His name, and what is His Son’s 
name ?’”’ if thou canst tell. Yes, I can tell, and I 
will tell you. For, when a Gospel preacher is in 
the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, a door is opened to 
him in heaven, and he is carried up to see the temple 
of God, and all its pillars, till he is able to tell, to 
all who have ears to hear, what is to be written on 
all the living pillars of that living temple. “‘ Merci- 
ful,’ will be one of God’s names written in letters 
of gold on many pillars. ‘“‘ Gracious,” in like letters 
on many other pillars. ‘“‘ Long-suffering,’’ upon 
some ; and “ abundant in goodness and in truth,” 
upon some. ‘‘ He brought me up also out of an 
horrible pit, out of the miry clay,”’ will shine on one 
great pillar; and on another, ‘‘ Out of the belly of 
hell cried I, and He heard my voice.’”’ And ona 
pillar of the rarest beauty and perfection of form, 
this: “‘O wretched man that I was! But I thank 
God through Jesus Christ my Lord.’’ Now what 
will be written upon you? What shall we gather 
round you and read, written upon you? For my 
part—you will read all these Scriptures written in 
large letters upon me. All these, and many more 
names of my God than all these. But especially, 


TO THE UTTERMOST 249 


my text of this morning will be written upon me— 
“Saved to the uttermost!’’ Saved to the utter- 
most! And to go no more out! The Chief of 
Sinners, and saved to the uttermost. 

“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding 
abundantly above all that we ask or think, accord- 
ing to the power that worketh in us: unto Him be 
glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all 
ages, world without end. Amen.” 


XX 
THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 


“I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of 
the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in My 
Father’s kingdom.’’—MattT. xxvi. 29. 


MILTON makes the angel say to Adam: 


“What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven ; and things therein 
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought ?”’ 


That is to say: as the Passover Supper in Israel 
was but the “shadow”’ of the Lord’s Supper in 
New Testament times, even so the Lord’s Supper 
itself is but the “‘ shadow ”’ of the Marriage Supper 
of the Lamb. Butler also says, in his own deep 
and suggestive way, that “‘ we are at present in 
the middle of a great progressive scheme of things: 
in the everlasting issues of which we are concerned 
far beyond all conception of ours.’”” That is to say: 
the Lord’s Supper is but one step in a great pro- 
gressive scheme of evangelical things: of which we, 
at present, see next to nothing of their perfected 
end. And thus it is that this text, as it falls from 
our Lord’s lips, carries the Lord’s Supper away 


250 


THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 251 


out of this present world of things altogether, and 
carries it away up into the new heavens and the 
newearth. The Lord’s Supper, as we now celebrate 
it, has a great historical and commemorative signi- 
ficance. But it has a great prophetic and anticipa- 
tive aspect also, in that it so plainly, and so 
impressively, points forward to the Marriage Supper 
of the Lamb. Let us take the Lord’s Supper, then, 
as it is spread before us this morning, as the earthly 
“shadow ’”’ of the heavenly Supper: let us look 
on our greatest means of grace on earth as, after 
all, but the sacramental pledge and foretaste of 
the far better things that God is preparing for them 
that love Him. 

To begin at the beginning: What was Moses, and 
his paschal lamb, but the “‘ shadow,” not so much of 
the Lord’s Supper on earth as of His far better 
Supper in heaven? The Old Testament lamb of 
Moses was the type of the New Testament Lamb of 
God. But for the once that our sin-atoning Lord 
is called ‘‘ The Lamb of God”’ in the Gospel, He is 
called by that same atonement-Name, actually, 
twenty-nine times in the Revelation. Now this 
continual remembrance of that atonement-Name 
of His in heaven is not without a great lesson to us 
—surely. That continually recurring Name of His 
in heaven is surely intended to teach us that we 
shall see ‘‘ the Lamb of God”’ in heaven, ‘‘ as He 
was slain’’ on earth; and that we shall see Him 


252 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


then, with far more wonder, and far more praise 
than we can possibly see Him now. So true is it, 
and so true will it then be seen to be that this earth, 
at its best, is “‘ but the shadow of heaven; and 
things therein each to other like, more than on 
earth is thought.” 

| But to come down to our own day. Did you ever 
think, as you enjoyed them beyond all words, that 
all our Communion Seasons on earth are but so 
many shadows of the innumerable Communion 
Seasons that will come round to us in heaven ? 
Sweet and sanctifying as they are, our very best 
Communion Seasons are not yet the Marriage 
Supper of the Lamb. At their best, our returning 
Communion Seasons are but the Betrothal Suppers 
of the Lamb. But in His Father’s house in heaven, 
there will be a real and a true Marriage Supper ; 
when our too-long betrothal will, at last, be “‘ ful- 
filled,’—to use the Bridegroom’s own glad word 
about it. Yes; and as those Communion Seasons, 
so to call them, come round in that world of things 
where time shall be no longer, but where there shall 
be something in the place of time—something that 
it hath not entered into the mind of man to imagine 
in the revolving years, so to call them, of the life 
everlasting,—there will, no doubt, be seasons when 
all our past, both on earth and in heaven, will be 
called to remembrance, and will be sealed down 
anew upon our souls. And as we have “ silver 


THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 258 


weddings ’’ and “ golden weddings ”’ and “‘ diamond 
weddings ’’ on earth, in which we joyfully com- 
memorate our happiest and our _ longest-lived 
weddings, even so there will be days of silver, and 
days of gold, and days of diamond in heaven, on 
which all the electing love of the Father, and all the 
redeeming love of the Son, and all the indwelling 
love of the Holy Ghost, will, again and again, be 
commemorated; and that in a way far more than 
a merely sacramental way. For, then, a far 
“, .. higher gift than grace 
Shall flesh and blood refine: 
Christ’s Presence, and His very Self, 
And Essence all-Divine.”’ 

And then, for my part—do not be afraid or 
offended—I fully expect to enjoy not Communion 
Sabbaths only in heaven, but Fast Days as well. 
Not Fast Days, indeed, when we shall hang our 
heads like a bulrush, and spread sackcloth and ashes 
under us. But Fast Days—so to call them—that 
shall be wholly fit for heaven, and entirely appro- 
priate to heaven. We shall not indeed “ examine 
ourselves’ in heaven, as to our broken vows since 
last communion. But we shall sit apart for a 
season, watching with our Lord for “one hour,” 
and shall examine ourselves as to our growth in 
glory, and in our ever-increasing likeness to Christ. 
There will be days in which we shall ask ourselves 
as to whether we are keeping sufficiently in mind 


254 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the hole of the pit out of which we were dug. As 
also, if we are continually recollecting all else that 
God, in Christ, has done for our souls. And I quite 
anticipate that, at such seasons of self-examination, 
there will be some among us who will have a certain 
sadness in our souls, as we call to mind the com- 
munion seasons of earth; and recollect how little 
we really examined and condemned ourselves on 
our appointed days of repentance, and with how 
little true preparation we ventured unto the Table. 
And all that will make us hasten to put on again the 
Wedding Garment of our Lord’s imputed righteous- 
ness, clothed and adorned with which we shall 
again sit down at His Table, and with this never- 
to-be-forgotten Psalm in our mouth: 


‘With us He dealt not as we sinned, 
Nor did requite our ill.” 


* Where wilt Thou,” said Peter and John, “ that 
we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?’’ And 
He said unto them: ‘“ Behold, when ye have 
entered into the city, ye shall find a large upper 
room furnished: there make ready.’’ And the 
two disciples did as they were commanded. And 
they took the blood of the paschal lamb in a basin, 
and they struck it on the two side-posts, and on the 
upper doorpost of the house in which they were 
to eat the Passover. And the blood was a token 
upon that house all that night, until the morning. 


THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 255 


Peter and John were, in that way, our Lord’s fore- 
runners that Passover night in Jerusalem. But 
our Lord is our Forerunner Himself in preparing 
for us to eat our true Passover Supper in the New 
Jerusalem. Indeed, our Lord bears in heaven that 
very Name. “ The Forerunner,” says the Apostle, 
“even Jesus, is for us entered. By His own blood 
He hath for us entered into the Holy Place ’’— 
even as He said: “‘I go to prepare a place for you.”’ 
“Now,’’ says an old preacher on this point, “‘a 
forerunner is always a forerunner of followers; and 
of such followers as stay not long behind. And 
our Lord bears that excellent Name because He 
has gone on before us to take up a place for us in 
His Father’s House of many mansions. Earthly 
forerunners,” that old preacher proceeds, “are 
wont to write the names of those who are to follow 
them, sometimes with chalk, and sometimes with 
paint, on the doors of the allotted lodgings; but 
we have such a ‘ Forerunner’ that He writes our 
names on the doorposts of heaven with His own 
blood. The sprinkled blood of the paschal lamb 
signed and sealed the identity and the ownership 
and the safety of every true Israelite’s house in the 
land of Egypt. But all that was only an earthly 
‘shadow ’ of our far better signed and sealed lintel 
and doorpost in the new heaven and the new 
earth.” 

‘“‘And Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and 


256 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


brake it, and gave it to His disciples, and said to 
them: Take, eat: this is My Body broken for you. 
And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave 
it to them, saying: Drink ye all of it.” The 
Reformed Church finds two sacraments in Holy 
Scripture; while the Church of Rome finds seven 
in the Scriptures and in Church-tradition. But 
the Church of Christ in Glory will have a whole 
multitude of sacraments. Indeed, there will be 
nothing to be seen, or tasted, or touched in heaven 
that will not be a true and a fruitful sacrament. 
For,—“ What is a Sacrament?’ ‘‘A Sacra- 
ment is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ, 
wherein, by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits 
of the New Covenant are represented, sealed, and 
applied to believers.’”” And the whole of our 
Father’s House, and of our own mansions in our 
Father’s House, will be as full as they can hold of 
such sensible signs: so far as our senses will hold 
there, and will have their objects there. In this 
respect, it will be with us in heaven, as it was with 
our Lard on earth. Everything He saw, as He 
went about, was a sacrament to Him. That is to 
say,—everything He saw around Him represented, 
and sealed, and applied the New Covenant and all 
its benefits, to Him and to His disciples. Did He, 
in one of His walks abroad, see a husbandman 
sowing seed in his field? So is the Kingdom of 
heaven, He said to Himself, and to His disciples. 


THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 257 


Did He see a vineyard, or a barren fig tree, or a 
lost sheep, or a piece of leaven, or a marriage 
supper, or a friend out at midnight to borrow loaves ? 
—absolutely everything that our Lord saw on 
earth, in one way or other, spoke to Him some- 
thing more concerning the Kingdom of heaven. 
And the same sacramental,—that is tosay, the same 
spiritual and imaginative mind, will by that time 
be found in all of us who shall be counted worthy 
communicants at the Table above. “Praise 
Him,”’ we shall all sing with the Psalmist. ‘‘ Praise 
Him, all ye His angels: praise Him, all ye His 
hosts. Praise Him, sun and moon; and all ye 
stars of light . . . mountains, and all hills: fruitful 
trees, and all cedars: beasts, and all cattle: creep- 
ing things, and flying fowl . . . both young men, 
and maidens: old men, and children. . .. Praise 
Him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise Him 
with the psaltery and the harp. Praise Him with 
the timbrel, and in the dance. Praise Him with 
stringed instruments, and with organs. Yea: let 
everything that hath breath all unite to praise 
the Lord.” So sacramental will the whole of 
creation have become to us all by that time. But 
most of all, the glorified Soul, and the glorified Body 
of our Redeemer, with the sacramental marks of 
our redemption remaining on His hands, and on 
His feet, and on His side. ‘“‘ It was a wise design 
of Mark Antony,’’ says Jeremy Taylor, ‘“‘ when he 
17 


258 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


would stir up the people to revenge the death of 
Cesar: he brought the dead body to the pleading- 
place, and showed to all men his deadly wounds. 
He held up Cesar’s stabbed mantle: the very 
mantle he put on that night in which he beat the 
Nervii. He put his finger in that fatal wound 
through which the dagger had pierced Cesar’s 
heart. And he told them with what a love that 
heart had always loved them: so much so, that he 
had made the people of Rome the heirs of all his 
glory, and all his wealth; and had left to them so 
many places of delight and pleasure. And then, 
it was but natural that their grief at the loss of 
so honourable and so loved a lord should fill the 
people with a great sorrow, and a great revenge.”’ 

And in like manner, there will be pleading-days 
and pleading-places in heaven where we shall see 
the “‘ Lamb as He had been slain’”’; and where we 
shall be filled, as never before, with a great sorrow, 
and a great revenge, and an ever greater love. Yea, 
with what indignation; yea, with what fear; yea, 
with what vehement desire; yea, with what zeal; 
yea, with what revenge, shall all our hearts be filled 
full! Tull our full hearts shall again find vent in 
this commemoration psalm : 

‘“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from 
all our sins in His own blood ; to Him be glory and 
dominion and power, for ever and ever. Amen!” 

“ But I say unto you, I will not henceforth drink 


THE NEW WINE OF THE KINGDOM 259 


of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall 
drink it new with you in My Father’s Kingdom.” 
I will drink wine new with you. That is to say— 
wine of a new kind. Wine out of a new vineyard. 
Wine out of a new winepress. Wine of a new 
Sweetness, and a new strength, and a new exhilara- 
tion. The fruit of the True Vine is love, joy, peace, 
gentleness, and all kinds of goodness; but, especially, 
love. 

“Thy love is better than wine,” the Bride shall 
say to the Bridegroom, as she leans on His breast 
at their Marriage Supper. And the Bridegroom 
shall answer her: “‘ [am come into my garden, my 
sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh 
with my spice: I have drunk my wine with my 
milk: eat, O Friends: drink, yea, drink abundantly, 
O Beloved.” ‘‘ This is my Beloved,’ shall the 
Bride then boast to all the daughters of Jerusalem. 
‘This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend! ” 
For I am my Beloved’s: and He is mine! Yea, 
I am His, and He is mine! 


Yes !—O Angel! 

“What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven ; and things therein 
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought!” 


nays 


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PART IV 
LAST MESSAGES 


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XXI 
A STUDY IN THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 


“ How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan ? ’’—-JER. xii. 5. 


BorTH in its disputed rise, and in its zigzag course, 
and then in its inscrutable fall—the Jordan is the 
most wonderful, and indeed, in some respects, the 
most mysterious river on the face of the earth. 
Rising among the obscure rocks and tangled forests 
of the Lebanon, the Jordan rushes down through a 
deep and a tortuous gorge, that has seldom seen 
a bridge, and that only here and there has admitted 
a ford for the foot of man or beast. Walled in by 
high and overhanging rocks, the Jordan runs its 
crooked and angry course for some 200 miles, 
till it loses itself in the Salt Sea, the Dead Sea 
of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the absolut ly 
miraculous passage of the Jordan by Joshua and 
the priests and the people of Israel, that gave the 
Jordan such a place of wonder and of praise in the 
prophets and psalmists of Israel. And as time went 
on, the passage of the Jordan became a proverb and 
a prophecy of the passing of the immortal soul, 


264 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


out of this life of bitter bondage and of long and 
sore pilgrimage, into the Promised Land, the 
Promised Land of our Heavenly Father’s House. 
And then, the prophet’s solemnising challenge— 
“ How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan ?’’—that 
has come powerfully home to every man who has 
an evil conscience, and who has it before him to die 
and to go to judgment. 

Well, then, before we come to ourselves, let us 
take a few moments to look at how some of our 
forerunners did when they came to the swelling of 
their “‘ Jordan.’”’ And, first—let us look at our 
blessed Lord Himself, when He was approaching 
the dark river of death. For though He had no 
sin of His own to burden His conscience and to 
darken His heart, yet, at the same time, He was 
made such a surety and such a substitute for sinners 
that the swelling of His Jordan became an agony ; 
and indeed, a terror to Him—so much so, that even 
the pen of inspiration trembles to describe His dying 
experiences. Listen, then, with all the holy fear 
you can command, to what is tremblingly written 
concerning even the “‘ Jordan ”’ of our sinless Lord. 
“‘ Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say ? 
Father, save Me from this hour.”’ ‘‘ Then took He 
with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and 
began to be sorrowful, and very heavy. Then 
saith He unto them, ‘ My soul is exceeding sorrowful, 
even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with 


A STUDY IN SWELLING OF JORDAN 265 


Me.’ And then He went a little farther, and fell 
on His face, and prayed, saying: ‘O My Father, if 
it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: neverthe- 
less not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’’’ As Mark has 
it: ““ He began to be sore amazed, and to be very 
heavy.” And as Luke hasit: “ Being in an agony, 
He prayed more earnestly : and His sweat was as it 
were great drops of blood falling to the ground. And 
on the morrow, when it was about the sixth hour, 
there was a great darkness over all the land until 
the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened; and 
the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And, 
when He had received the vinegar, Jesus cried with 
a loud voice and said, ‘Father! into Thy hands 
I commend My spirit!’ And, having said this, 
He gave up the ghost.’”’ Now that, my brethren, 
was somewhat of how our Lord did in the swelling 
of His Jordan. 

‘“‘ And one of the malefactors which were crucified 
beside Him railed on Him, and said, ‘If Thou be 
Christ, save Thyself and us.’ But the other 
answering rebuked him, saying, ‘Dost thou not 
fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation ? 
And we indeed justly; for we receive the due 
reward of our deeds: but this man hath done 
nothing amiss.” And he said unto Jesus, ‘ Lord, 
remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.’ 
And Jesus said to him, ‘Verily I say unto thee, 
To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.’’’ And 


266 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


that was how the penitent thief did in the swelling 
of his Jordan. 

And this is how Stephen, the martyr-deacon, 
did. After he had spoken his great speech, his 
enemies were cut to the heart, and they rose upon 
him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, 
and stoned him to death ; and he died calling upon 
God, and saying: ‘“‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, 
and lay not this sin to their charge.’’ And they 
laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, 
whose name was Saul. And thirty years after 
that, Saul, by that time called Paul, descended 
into jis Jordan with these words: “ I thank Christ 
Jesus our Lord for putting me into the ministry : 
me, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor : 
but I obtained mercy; that in me Jesus Christ 
might show forth all His long-suffering for a pattern 
to them which should hereaiter believe on Him to 
life everlasting. And now, I am ready to be 
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. 
And henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to 
me only, but unto all them also that love His 
appearing.”’ 

When Augustine saw that the swelling of his 
Jordan was fast approaching him, he got one of his 
divinity students to paint the thirty-second Psalm 
on the wall opposite his bed. And that great 


A STUDY IN SWELLING OF JORDAN 267 


saint descended into his dark river, singing and 
saying : 


““O blessed is the man to whom 

Is freely pardonéd 

All the transgression he hath done 
Whose sin is coveréd. 

I will confess unto the Lord 
My trespasses, said I ; 

And of my sin Thou freely didst 
Forgive the iniquity.” 


2 


“Venerable Father,’ said Justus Jonas to 
Luther, when fe was nearing fis dark river: 
“Venerable Father, do you die trusting in Jesus 
Christ as your God and Saviour, and subscribing 
to the whole reformed doctrines that you con- 
stantly preached to us?” “Yes, certainly! ”’ 
shouted the great Reformer with his last breath. 
“Yes, certainly! Jesus Christ is my Lord and my 
God, and He is my alone Righteousness and Strength 
both in death as in life! ”’ 

But by far and away our best handbook and 
guide-book as we draw near the swelling of our 
Jordan is John Bunyan’s marvellous narrative of 
the various experiences of his puritan pilgrims, as 
they approached the dark river, and went through 
it. ‘‘ Now, I further saw that betwixt them and 
the gate above there was a River; but there was 
no bridge over the River; and the River was very 
deep. Then they addressed themselves to the 
water; and, entering, Christian began to sink, till 


268 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


he cried out to Hopeful, his neighbour, ‘I sink in 
deep waters, the billows go over my head: all His 
angry waves go over me.’ But Hopeful said, ‘ Be 
of good cheer, my Brother, for I feel the bottom ; 
and it is good.’ And with that Christian broke 
out with a loud voice, “O! I see Him again! and 
He says to me, When thou passest through the 
waters, I will be with thee: and through the rivers, 
they shall not overflow thee.’ ”’ 

And some time afterwards, when Christiana, the 
widow of Christian the pilgrim, came within sight 
of the same river, she called for Mr. Greatheart, her 
guide, and told him how matters stood with her. 
So he answered her, that he was heartily glad for 
her sake, and that he could have been glad had 
the heavenly post come for him. Then she called 
for her children; and what she said to them is all 
to be read at the end of her fine history. The last 
words she was heard to say here, were these: “I 
come, Lord, to be with Thee, and to bless Thee.”’ 

The next of that pilgrim company to come to 
the River was Mr. Ready-to-halt. And the last 
words he was heard to say were these: ‘‘ Welcome 
life.’’ So he also went on his way. 

After this, the same post sounded his horn at the 
chamber door of Mr. Feeble-Mind. And his last 
words were: ‘“‘ Hold out, Faith and Patience! ”’ 
And saying so, he also went over to the other side. 

How Mr Despondency and his daughter Miss 


A STUDY IN SWELLING OF JORDAN 269 


Much-Afraid got over, and what they said, I leave 
you to read for your own desponding and much- 
afraid selves. 

As, also, dear old Honest, and his last words. 
And Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, and his brave words 
about his sword, and about his marks and his scars 
that he carried over with him. And to crown all 
—the magnificent speech of Mr. Standfast. Than 
which, even John Bunyan never penned two nobler 
pages. But how glorious it was to see how the 
regions beyond the dark River were all filled with 
horses and chariots; with pipers and with 
trumpeters; with singers with the voice and with 
players on stringed instruments; and all to wel- 
come the pilgrims as they went up and followed 
one another in at the Beautiful Gate of the City! 
But among all John Bunyan’s characters and 
their end, do not forget Mr. Fearing, who is in 
some respects the Tinker’s spiritual and literary 
masterpiece. 

And now, after all that, I will only take time to 
give you Bishop Butler and fis Jordan. When 
the great moralist, the old Honest of the Episcopal 
Bench, was on his death-bed, he called for his 
chaplain, and said to him: “ Though I have en- 
deavoured to avoid sin, and to please God to the 
utmost of my power; yet from the consciousness 
of perpetual infirmities, I am still afraid to die.” 
“My lord,” said the chaplain, “you have for- 


270 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


gotten that Jesus Christ is a Saviour.” ‘ True,” 
said Butler, “‘ but how shall I know that He is a 
Saviour for me?” “ My lord, it is written, Him 
that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.” 
“True,’”’ said the bishop; “‘and I am surprised that 
though I have read that Scripture a thousand 
times over, I never felt its virtue till this moment. 
And now I die happy.”’ 

Now, my brethren, let it be well understood and 
believed that all these dying men—from Jesus 
Christ Himself downward—were all but so many 
pioneers and forerunners to teach us how we are 
to do when we come to the swelling of our Jordan. 
And first, let us learn some much-needed lessons 
from our Lord Himself. And especially, this great 
lesson—to say at every step of our approach to 
our Jordan, and at every soul-sinking billow of it 
—‘Thy will be done!’ Our Lord had been 
saying these same sonship-words every day, and 
all His days; and accordingly these same sonship- 
words came naturally and fully and finally to His 
believing lips at the end of His days. For one 
thing, He had prayed, and that without ceasing, 
for thirty years, for the conversion of His un- 
believing brothers and sisters at home in Nazareth. 
And hitherto He had prayed, as it seemed, in vain. 
And worse, it seemed, thanin vain. For, year after 
year, they all seemed to go farther away from their 
true salvation than ever before. And yet, in all 


A STUDY IN SWELLING OF JORDAN 271 


that, Christ may only have been made, more and 
more, like to you and to me. For years, year after 
year, some of you may have been praying and 
waiting for the true conversion of some one or 
more dear to you; and like your Lord, you may 
have to die and to leave them as they were, only 
worse. And that may well be the cross of all your 
crosses on your death-bed. 

My brethren, travellers in the Holy Land tell 
us that the Jordan is sometimes very mysterious, 
very dark, very deep, very crooked, and sometimes 
very angry, and without a bridge to cross it or a 
ford to wade it. It was so to your Lord, and it is 
enough for this life that the disciple be as his Lord 
was. My brethren, if the Son of God and the 
Prince of believers and your great High Priest had 
to say, aS He looked around on His unconverted 
family circle, “‘ Thy will be done,” it is enough 
for you to be able to say the same thing. But what 
you are never to know here of the dark mystery of 
your unanswered prayer, you will certainly know 
hereafter: even as He now knows. 

And then, Paul’s old age and the nearness of his 
Jordan have taught many old men, and especially 
many old ministers, this lesson. “‘ I am now ready 
to be offered, and the time of my departure is at 
hand. Do thy diligence therefore to come to me 
shortly. And bring with thee the cloak I left at 
Troas, and the books, and especially the parch- 


272 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


ments.’ And so it is with some of the successors 
of the book-loving apostle. You will go into the 
old-age chamber of some of your ministers and you 
will find near their chair, and near their bed, such 
old-age books and such Jordan-bank books as 
these: John’s Revelation open at the twenty-first 
and twenty-second chapters; and Dante’s Para- 
diso; and Bunyan’s Pulgrim’s Progress; and 
Baxter’s Saints’ Rest; and Howe's Blessedness of 
the Righteous ; and Rutherford’s Letters ; and New- 
man’s Dream of Gerontius ; and the Olney and the 
Wesley Hymns. Many years ago, I went into the 
death-chamber of an elder of this congregation, 
and he laid his hand on the Westminster Confession 
of Faith lying open at the great chapter on Justi- 
fication ; and he said to me, “Sir, I am dying in 
the strength of that peace-speaking chapter.’’ Do 
thy diligence to bring the right books, as soon as 
possible, wrote Paul to Timothy, his son in the 
Gospel. 

And all men who are of a philosophic turn of 
mind will take theiy lesson from Bishop Butler’s 
death-bed. ‘‘ Him that cometh unto Me,” said the 
Saviour, ‘‘ I will in no wise cast out.’’ 

“T’ve read a thousand times that Scripture o’er, 
Nor felt its truth till now I near the tomb: 
It is enough! O Saviour Christ, I come.” 

“‘ It was Bishop Butler who made me a Christian,” 

said Dr. Chalmers to his students, generously con- 


os 





A STUDY IN SWELLING OF JORDAN 273 


fessing his indebtedness to the great philosopher. 
Let us all, lke Dr. Chalmers, take the same 
philosopher for our everyday example—this day 
and every day—till we take him for our example 
on the last day of our earthly pilgrimage, and for 
our Jordan-side example, and say with him: “O 
Lamb of God, I come.”’ 


‘Just as I am, without one plea 
But that Thy blood was shed for me, 
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, 
O Lamb of God, I come. 


Just as I am, and waiting not 

To rid my soul of one dark blot, 

To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot, 
O Lamb of God, I come. 


Just as I am, though tossed about 

With many a conflict, many a doubt, 

Fightings and fears within, without, 
O Lamb of God, I come. 


Just as I am, of that free love 
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove, 
Here for a season, then above, 

O Lamb of God, I come.” Amen. 


‘* And then shall the King say unto them on His 
right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, in- 
herit the Kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world.” 

And to all who so come to Him, and who keep so 
coming, He will surely say: “‘ When thou passest 


through the waters, I will be with thee; and through 
18 


274 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


the rivers, they shall not overflow thee’’: “ till the 
redeemed of the Lord shall return, and shall come 
to Zion with songs and with everlasting joy upon 
their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and 
sorrow and sighing shill flee away.” 


ee ee ee 


XXII 


THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION AT 
THE PASSOVER SUPPER 


** It shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, 
What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the 
sacrifice of the Lord’s passover.’’—Ex. xii. 26, 27. 


Hap you been a sojourner in any Hebrew house, 
on any Passover night in Old Testament times, 
you would have seen and heard all this. You 
would have seen the head of the house killing a 
lamb, and sprinkling its blood on the doorpost of 
the house. The flesh of the lamb was then roasted, 
and was eaten along with unleavened bread and 
bitter herbs. And all the assembled family ate 
their Passover supper standing on their feet, with 
their loins girt and with their staff in their hand ; 
and all that in haste, as if they were all ready for a 
midnight escape. 

And always, at this point of the ordinance, the 
eldest son of the house came forward, and said to his 
father: ‘“‘ What mean ye by this service?’’ And 
the head of the house always gave the same pre- 
scribed reply: ‘ This is the sacrifice of the Lord’s 


275 


276 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


Passover, who passed over the houses of our fathers 
in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and de- 
livered His covenanted people.’ And once every 
year, all down the generations, the same scene was 
enacted: till we see, now, the child David; and 
now, the child Solomon ; and now, the child Isaiah ; 
and now, the child Daniel; and now, the child, 
Jesus of Nazareth; and now, the child Saul of 
Tarsus—all asking the same question, and all 
receiving the same answer. , | 
Now, it cannot fail to be both interesting and 
instructive to us this morning, if we follow the 
example of the Hebrew households, and bring 
forward, now a young communicant, and now a 
foreign student, to ask what is our Lord’s meaning, 
and what is our meaning in this and in that part 
of our Communion service. For there will be young 
communicants here this morning, whose hunger for 
yet fuller teaching has only been whetted by what 
they have been taught at home, and in the Com- 
munion class. Like the Child Jesus, Who, just 
because He had asked the question of the text, and 
had received the answer of the text, every Passover 
night in Nazareth, was only all the more found in 
the Temple at His first Passover in Jerusalem, 
sitting in the midst of the doctors both hearing 
them and asking them questions. Or again, there 
will be some divinity student here, from Africa 
or from India, or from China or from Japan, who is 


ee — 





THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION 277 


seeing for the first time the Lord’s Supper dispensed 
in all its fulness, and in all its orderliness: and 
who, student-like, is not willing to let any part of 
the service pass, till he has fully and clearly under- 
stood the whole Communion ordinance as it is ob- 
served in the long evangelised and long covenanted 
land of Scotland. 

Now, that being so, I can imagine a young com- 
municant coming forward at the opening of the 
service this morning, and saying that he thinks he 
understands why this ordinance is called sometimes 
““The New Testament Passover,’’ and sometimes 
“The Lord’s Supper,’ and sometimes “ The Com- 
munion.’’ But he was reading an English Church 
Catechism the other evening, when he came on 
another name that he is not sure he fully under- 
stands. And that somewhat difficult Episcopal 
name is the “Eucharist.” Well, that is a quite 
fit and proper question to ask. And this is my 
answer to that question. Eucharist is an un- 
translated Greek work, which means the giving of 
thanks. And you will remember how the Gospels 
tell us again and again that our Lord began the 
Paschal Supper that night by giving thanks to His 
Father in heaven. We read that fact again and 
again. But it is not so easily understood just why 
He gave thanks for the bread and for the wine, and 
for all that the broken bread and the poured out 
wine symbolised that New Testament Passover 


278 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


night. I can quite easily understand Peter and 
James and John giving great thanks for the Lord’s 
Table, because they were great sinners. But that 
was just what their Master was not. “‘ He knew no 
sin ’’ ; and therefore He did not need the redemption 
from sin that was set forth by that broken bread 
and that poured out wine. For what then did He 
give thanks? For what, communicants, but for 
this, that it is far more blessed to give redemption 
than it is to receive it ; and it was for that supreme 
blessedness of His, that night, that He gave His 
Father such heartfelt thanks. Old William Grant 
of Ayr has answered your difficulty about Christ’s 
Passover thanks, in these true and beautiful Com- 
munion lines of his : 


*‘ And could’st Thou, Lord, Thy thanks express 
In prospect of Thy deep distress ? 
And at the Table, spread to show 
Thy symbols of Thy coming woe. 


And could’st Thou bless Thy God on high, 
That He had sent Thee thus to die, 

And for our sins to give Thee up 

To drink wrath’s overwhelming cup ? 


O! what a love must Thine have been! 
To praise in view of such a scene! 

When broken bread, and poured out wine, 
Portrayed those bitter woes of Thine.” 


Yes; I think my dear old friend has here given the 
true reply to your question about the Eucharist: 





THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION 279 


that is to say, about our Saviour’s giving of thanks 
at the table that night. 

Again, you will all have observed that the first 
thing the officiating minister does at the head of the 
Table is to read what he calls the “warrant” for 
what he and the elders and the communicants are 
about to do. Now, what is a “ warrant”? What 
is it but a permission, a sanction, a legalisation of 
something that is about to be done? But we 
take our place at the Lord’s Table to-day on far 
stronger grounds than any mere warrant. For we 
came to His Table at our Lord’s express desire 
and earnest wish: nay, we come at His express 
command. “Do this,” He says, “im remembrance 
of Me.” “ Take, eat,’ He says, handing round the 
bread; “ this is My body broken for you: this do 
in remembrance of Me.” And, “ This cup is the 
New Testament in My blood, therefore, this also 
do ye in remembrance of Me.” “ For,” adds the 
apostle, “as often as ye eat this bread and drink 
this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death till He 
come.” So that, you see, we will neglect the Lord’s 
Table at our peril: yes, at our peril: as we shall 
answer to Him, at His coming, for having boldly 
disobeyed His dying command, and for openly 
despising and trampling upon His body and His 
blood. 

But then, on the other hand, there is what is 
called “fencing the Table.” Now you all know 


280 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


at once what a fence is—for what purpose a shep- 
herd runs a fence round his sheepfold. Well: all 
men, the very worst, are welcome; and at all 
times are welcome to the Saviour. There are no 
fences run around the Cross. But, in the nature 
of things, all men are not welcome, as yet, to the 
Lord’s Table. Why—the very apostle of free 
grace, of full and immediate and abounding grace 
to all men, spends the half of his First Epistle to 
the sanctified in Corinth, in running a strong and 
a sharp fence round the Lord’s Table in that so 
corrupt city. And then, not apostles and pastors 
only are on occasion to fence the Lord’s Table; 
but there are times and circumstances when 
intending communicants themselves are rigidly 
to fence themselves away from the Table. For, 
“it is required of them that would worthily partake 
of the Lord’s Supper, that they examine themselves 
of their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, 
of their faith to feed upon Him, of their repentance, 
love, and new obedience: lest, coming unworthily, 
they eat and drink judgment to themselves.”” But 
then, truly and properly speaking, no man is, or 
ever will be, worthy to partake of the Table of the 
Lord. But worthiness is one thing, when a com- 
municant is looked at as he is in himself; and it 
is quite another thing, when he is looked at as in 
Christ, and as invited and indeed commanded by 
Christ to come to His Table. 





THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION 281 


*‘T am not worthy ; cold and bare 
The lodging of my soul ; 
How canst Thou deign to enter there ? 
Lord, speak, and make me whole. 


O come, in this sweet morning hour 
Feed me with food divine ; 

And fill with all Thy love and power 
This worthless heart of mine.’ 


At this stage of our service, a divinity student, 
say from India, comes forward, and says that, 
though he had often heard the Scottish missionaries 
speak of the Shorter Catechism with profound 
reverence, he had never had the least idea of the 
intellectual power and the spiritual depth of that 
scriptural document, till he came to the New 
College and commenced to study divinity seriously, 
seriously and with all his might. And just last 
night when he was working his way through the 
sacramental chapters of the Catechism to prepare 
himself for this morning, he came on the passage 
that promised him “spiritual nourishment ’’— 
spiritual nourishment and growth in grace—at the 
Table to-day. And he would like to learn more 
of what the Catechism means by “ spiritual nourish- 
ment and growth in grace.’”’ Well, the answer is 
this: The communicant’s body is not nourished at 
the Lord’s Table: it is his soul; it is his spirit 
that is nourished here. “‘ Let every man eat his 
own supper at home, for his bodily nourishment,” 
says the Apostle. But he who would have his soul 


282 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


and spirit nourished to more and more spiritual 
and eternal life, let him come, by faith, to the 
Lord’s Table. As Robert Bruce (that stately 
Presbyterian divine, as David Masson calls him) 
said in his Fourth Sermon on the Sacraments, 
delivered in the High Kirk of Edinburgh in the 
year 1590: “The flesh of Christ is not like any 
other eaten flesh: the flesh of Christ is such that 
it is really not my bodily but my spiritual nourish- 
ment. The flesh of Christ symbolised by the 
broken bread serves me to my spiritual life; and 
for this reason, it is called my spiritual food. It is 
called spiritual in respect of the end and design 
for which I partake of it ; because when I, by faith, 
aright partake of it, | am thereby nourished not to 
a bodily life but to a spiritual and a heavenly life.” 
Let every true student of the Sacraments read 
Robert Bruce in his so racy Scotch; and along 
with Bruce, Jonathan Edwards on the Religious 
Affections. Two masterly men to be read and read 
again by all true students of these divine matters. 
For my part, I read them both every pre-communion 
week. 

Another thing that will have arrested the young 
communicants last week, as they read the history 
of the Lord’s Supper as it was instituted that 
Passover night, was this: “‘ A new commandment,” 
said Christ to His disciples, ““I give unto you at 
My Table: and that is that ever after this night 





THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION 283 


you shall love one another, as I have loved you.” 
A new commandment, He said, and with a great 
emphasis. And yet all the time that was an old 
commandment. That was a commandment as old 
as when man was first made in the image of the 
God of love. But all old things were made new 
that great new-creation night, in the upper room. 
And that new commandment of brotherly love 
must have come home with new and poignant 
power even to the dullest mind and the hardest 
heart at that New Testament Table. For it was 
only yesterday that they had all scandalised their 
Master, by the way they had “ disputed’ as they 
came up to Jerusalem to the Passover; disputed 
with a great heat as to who would be greatest in 
the coming Kingdom. And it was in His great 
shame and pain at their envious and angry quarrel, 
that their Master poured water into a basin, and 
took a towel and washed their feet: as also, put 
into the hands of every one of them, Judas Iscariot 
and all, the broken bread and the poured out wine 
of His body and His blood. ‘“‘As I have loved 
you, that ye go and love and serve one another,” 
He said: “ rejoicing in one another’s greatness in 
My Kingdom, more than in your own greatness 
therein.’ Yes; a new commandment, because 
issued on such a new ground that Lord’s Supper 
night. 

During the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper 


284 WITH MERCY AND WITH JUDGMENT 


that night, six of the twelve disciples came forward 
and put Passover questions to their Master. Judas 
and Peter and John, and Thomas and Philip and 
Judas, not Iscariot—all put Passover questions to 
Him; and we have the answers that they all got. 
But there was one thing that our Lord said and 
did that night, concerning which no one seems to 
have felt any difficulty, or started any inquiry. 
‘““Verily,’’ He said, “I will drink no more of the 
fruit of the vine, till I drink it new with you in the 
Kingdom of God.” What did He mean? What 
exactly did He mean them and us to understand 
by that mysterious saying of His? This, I think— 
All the old things of this world are to be made new 
in the Kingdom of God, and all our old wines among 
them. When He Who sits upon the throne has 
made all things new, there will be new heavens and 
anew earth. There will be a new Jerusalem, and 
in the new Jerusalem a new upper room. There 
will be new vineyards, and new vines in that Holy 
Land—our Heavenly Father all the time abiding 
the Husbandman. 

And then will be fulfilled the great promise 
made of old to the evangelical prophet: “‘ Now 
will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved 
touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a 
vineyard in a very fruitful hill. And I the Lord 
do keep it: I will water it every moment: and 
lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” 


THE HEBREW CHILD’S QUESTION 285 


And then, when all the trees of Paradise restored 
shall say to that vine: “‘ Come thou and reign over 
us’”’; then shall that heavenly vine answer them 
and say: ‘How shall I leave my wine, which 
cheereth and maketh glad the heart of God and 
man, and go to be promoted over the other trees? 
No; I will not.” And, then, concerning that new 
wine it will never be said: “‘ Look not on it when it 
is red: when it giveth his colour in the cup’”’: for 
that heavenly wine will not bite like a serpent, and 
sting like an adder. But instead of that bitter 
proverb this sweet nuptial song shall be sung by the 
Bridegroom over the Bride: ‘‘I have come into 
my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have drunk 
my wine with my milk: eat, O friends: drink, yea, 
drink abundantly, O Beloved, of the running- 
over wine-cup of my everlasting love.” Yes, 
communicants! So shall it be said to you all; 
and so shall it be done to you all, at the Marriage 
Supper of the Lamb. 


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